Review: THE PROJECT, White Bear Theatre

We're in a Dutch transit camp with men and women wearing the yellow Star of David and one wearing the eagle of the SS. The Jews are getting by, currying favour with the Kommandant by putting on cabarets (more of that later) but the transports are going East every Tuesday and - it's 1943 - nobody knows why or what happens later. Though there are rumours...

Ian Buckley's new play, The Project, locates an interesting point in history - those interned in the "centre" do not suffer the utter depravities of the death camps (but they are under the Nazi jackboot) so it's not impossible to believe that there was some wriggle room for the internees, some discourse that one might recognise as "normal". What compromises were made, what deals were struck, what prices were paid?

Unfortunately, those questions are buried in an avalanche of words and characterisations that just do not maintain the heft required to undertake that heavy lifting. There are times when one feels uncomfortable at the politics that emerges - maybe we should, but perhaps not in the way that we do.

The central problem is the Kommandant who is presented as a lascivious middle manager with wandering hands and a thing for cabaret singers. But he's also a ruthless SS man who shoots first and asks questions later and can "kiss" a woman against her wishes.

Mike Duran does what he can with the part, but does anyone believe that an SS man would not expect "a housekeeper" to go through his papers? That he would negotiate and plead with his Jewish prisoner as a near equal? That he would believe that the SS High Command would simply bow to his flip-flopping? I cannot have been alone in thinking very uneasily of the Hollywood #MeToo parallels, particularly its most high profile accused man.

The best elements of the show are the songs, sung beautifully by Faye Maughan, Eloise Jones and Nick Delvallé in the cabaret put on for the centre's internees and staff. There's a less successful pantomiming of a slapstick routine which I certainly failed to understand - but so be it.

I also failed to buy into the play's premise in any meaningful way, despite its being based in actual events. Would an SS man be so open about his enjoyment of decadent Jewish cabaret, the antithesis of the Nazi aesthetic? Would the word "fit" be used (in 1943) to describe the good looks of a person? Would the friends of an escapee be allowed to leave on the transports (still being presented as a route to work and salvation) instead of being summarily shot "pour encourager les autres"?

There's also no sense of place - no blaring announcements, not even a picture of the Führer hanging on the Kommandant's wall. And yet scene changes seem to last so long that you're tempted to check your texts just to pass the time as the decanter and glasses clink yet again as they're placed on the desk in the dark. Fringe theatre has its limitations, but director, Anthony Shrubsall, has to do better than this.

Weighing in at well over two hours, the tensions (such as they are) dissipate almost before they build, and the when the end does arrive, visible from the first five minutes, it's a relief to give one's ears a break.

The Project continues at The White Bear Theatre until 23 March.

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