Review: ONCE UPON A TIME IN NAZI OCCUPIED TUNISIA, Almeida Theatre

Victor's smart mouth has got him into trouble with the Nazis and he is being guarded by an erstwhile friend, Yussef, under the watchful evil eye of Little Fella, who works for the local Kommandant, Grandma. Soon we find out what lies between the captive man and his prisoner and about a largely unknown period in history.

Josh Azouz's new play takes a familiar theme from countless movies and books - how to resist the Nazis - and gives it both an unfamiliar setting (I'll vouch most Brits wouldn't even have known Tunisia was occupied in 1942) and, with the clever use of 21st century language and character traits, gives it resonance that also makes the play very much about today. Funny, frightening and occasionally furious, this is no dusty historical documentary.

Max Johns simple but ingenious set and Jess Bernberg's beautiful lighting immediately create the sense of place we need - crucial when we're continually reminded that the men and women before us would be speaking in French, German and Arabic and not vernacular present day English. This is the stage on which Adrian Edmondson struts about as Grandma, at times sailing close to the Blackadderish "Ve are ze masters now" caricature he's rolled out on TV before, but melding humour, charisma and menace into a terrifying and (no mean achievement this) wholly credible psychopath. More than once you involuntarily summon that unsettling thought, "Should I be laughing at this?" - always a marker of good writing and acting if intended (and it certainly is).

Two interconnected central relationships drive the narrative: Victor and Loys (married, Jewish, Tunisian but worldly); and Yussef and Faiza (married, Muslim, Tunisian but local). Through these four friends circling of each other as the intolerable stresses of Nazi laws and their enforcement reaches deeper and deeper into their lives, we learn of the long history of Jews in North Africa, of the Muslims' resentment of French colonialism and of the bag, the one all Jewish families have packed and ready to go no matter where they live and no matter how established their community may be.

Pierro Niel-Mee gets lands plenty of wisecracks as Victor and nails the ways in which desperate circumstances can lead to desperate decisions from even the smartest of men. Ethan Kai is equally good as Youssef, pulled one way by his friendship (maybe more) with Loys and Victor and the other by the seductive false Nazi promise of liberation from French colonial rule. The women's roles are less successful, Laura Hanna's Faiza underwritten to the extent that she never really comes alive as do the other characters and Yasmin Paige burdened with too much exposition as Loys, dialogue spilling over into speeches at times. There's also a sinister cameo from Daniel Rainford to "enjoy" as Little Fella, perhaps a nod to Wilhelm Reich's Little Man, the unthinking German who went along with fascism and became a true believer.

If the polemical passages are the price we pay for the pleasure of intellectually nourishing fare like this, it's a price worth paying, with Ken Livingstone's outrageous musings of a few years back getting a well-deserved and highly satisfactory skewering. Director, Eleanor Rhode, has created a visually stunning show with sparkling wit, enduring wisdom and a warning not just for the future, but for the right here, the right now.

Once Upon A Time In Nazi Occupied Tunisia continues at the Almeida Theatre until 18 September.

BWW's interview with Yasmin Paige.

Photo Marc Brenner

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