The Bridge Theatre – until the 11 May 2019
Reviewed by Serena Norgren
5*****
A German Life is a new play by Christopher Hampton and directed by Jonathan Kent, drawn from the life and testimony of Brunhilde Pomsel, a secretary in Berlin during the 1930s who eventually ends up becoming a secretary in the German Propaganda Department run by Joseph Goebbels. The play is drawn from the testimony Pomsel gave when she finally broke her silence shortly before she died to a group of Austrian filmmakers, and from their documentary with the same title. The secret ingredient of what is a great premise is unequivocally the marvellous Maggie Smith, who returns to the stage for the first time in 12 years as Pomsel at the tender age of 84.
And now the superlatives can begin. Maggie Smith is an absolute triumph: not in a dramatic flair of artistic tour de force way but, more, in an understated, delicate and vague fashion. Smith sits alone in a chair clutching her glasses for the whole performance but whatever the inverse of physical theatre is, she does it and holds the audience riveted for 1hr and 40 minutes without taking a single step. We are in “conversation” with her as an elderly woman.
We learn about her life as a teenager, working her way up Goebbels department, fast tracked for her excellent shorthand skills. At times, her account of what she did is full of banality and almost a wilful naivete to ignore the horrors that are happening around her – she stumbles as she tries to remember the name of Kristallnacht. At other points, it is difficult not to sympathise with the hopelessness of her situation and her sadness. Her own prejudices creep out from time to time too…”they looked like Mongolians with slitty….well you know” rendering her a dichotomy. Is she hero or anti-hero – the fact is, like most people she is somewhere in the middle, a bit of both.
Her lack of anger at and her abdication of responsibility for what her nation has done to the Jews and a determination to accept the unacceptable without question is uncomfortable and rather depressingly relevant today in our political landscape. She describes herself as “apolitical” – an ordinary girl carried along by the events of the time. Her apathy towards what is going on resonates!
This does not feel like a play but a genuine conversation with an elderly lady. She is often vague and hesitant in her delivery, stumbling as she recalls events in her life. Smith’s sense of timing and pause are just immaculate. At 84, she may well have been slightly playing for time (what a feat just to even learn the lines) but it never felt like that for a moment.
The set (by Anna Fleischle) is just Pomsel’s living room but somehow throughout the piece, it moves from feeling totally unassuming to quite corrupt. Equally the lighting design (by Jon Clark) is ostensibly extremely natural but as we reach the end of the war, the lighting is reduced to a simple spot on Smith.
This really is the most wonderful piece of theatre which I think in a “Laurence Olivier as Henry V” kind of a way will be remembered and treasured forever.