Review: FEAR AND MISERY OF THE THIRD REICH, Brockley Jack Studio Theatre

Perhaps the radio clips standing in for banners to introduce the scenes were not necessary - we all know Brecht is political and the only two games in that town right now are Trump and Brexit, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of grinning gormlessness. There's never a bad time to revive this work but, regrettably, there's probably never been a better time.

Director Rachael Bellis presents John Willett's adaptation of Brecht's series of vignettes (not all of them, but plenty enough to get the picture) in contemporary settings in a modern translation. What emerges is, chillingly, more an evocation of a generic totalitarian state than a specifically Nazi regime - and its drivers are, as the title suggests, fear and misery, two emotions writ large in the populist's playbook.

Caught on the wrong side of town, two Nazi thugs imagine enemies everywhere and respond to the most innocent of circumstances with violence, guns in hand.

An informant, MAGA hat on empty head, shows how he shops those spreading "fake news" with a simply chalk "X" transferred from the palm of his hand to the back of a coat. Who needs a surveillance state when low tech is as effective?

Two everyday parents, having spoken some mild criticism of the government in their living room, panic as they convince each other that their son, out buying sweets, is informing the authorities of their private dissent.

It is the ordinariness of Brecht's largely humdrum domestic situations that gives the play its power. The state creates the misery, than preys on the fear it engenders to root out anyone questioning the rulers' politics.

But it also creates the fear (of unknown others ready to destroy the state's Trumpeted achievements) to spread the anxiety that ferments into the misery that keeps people striving to stay one step ahead of their downtrodden neighbour, disproportionately grateful for the scraps thrown from the rich man's table.

As a drama, Fear and Misery in the Third Reich is a tough ask produce. It's episodic, so we don't really get to know the person behind the archetype portrayed, character development necessarily choked off as the next scene takes over. There's a nagging feeling too that conversations are more snippets of speeches (sometimes deliberately so, to demonstrate the brainwashing), but it makes it tricky to believe that these are real people, rather than vehicles for political points.

Rhiannon Sommers does a fine job in something that Alan Bennett might have written, as a thirty-something Jewish woman talks herself into fleeing the Reich for the dubious safety of Amsterdam, her husband quietly complicit in her deceit. Clark Alexander is also hulkingly authentic as the yobbish informant, the working class set against the working class, he a willing, bullying true believer, his self-esteem puffed up on propaganda.

Of course, it's Brecht, so it's hardly fair to make this objection, but the lack of a unifying narrative arc does detract from the play, which has the stop-start structure of a youtube playlist rather than the satisfactory coherence of a 100 minutes movie. That said, it's an excellent introduction to Brecht for any students looking at political theatre or history and, though likely to be preaching to the choir in terms of its audience, a reminder that we've been here before and survived. Just, and though not without far. far too many victims.

Fear and Misery in the Third Reich continues at the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre until 3 February.

Photo James Wordsworth

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