Review: A GERMAN LIFE, Bridge Theatre

Having been away from the stage for 12 years, Maggie Smith has returned in exceptional style in Christopher Hampton's A German Life.

It's a straight-through, almost two-hour monologue, in which Smith plays Brunhilde Pomsel, recounting her life story as if the Bridge Theatre audience were a long-lost friend visiting for afternoon tea.

At the start, she points out that sometimes she forgets things or gets a bit mixed up, and a few times throughout she states that she's "lost her thread".

These small hints serve partly to permit a very naturalistic delivery by Smith, with pauses, small repetitions and contradictions. More subtly, but more importantly, they're a reminder that a single testimony should never be unquestioningly taken as the whole truth of a story.

The tale moves through Brunhilde's life, starting with a childhood during which her father was sent to fight in the First World War. She leaves school at 15 because her father refused to pay the fees, and goes on to learn secretarial skills and work in fashion houses and insurance brokers during her teens and young adulthood.

Things begin to take a darker turn when she finds herself moving to a job in the news department of the Third Reich's broadcasting station, part of the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda, and becoming secretary to Joseph Goebbels.

We then stray into the realm of political rallies, persecution and concentration camps. Smith's delivery is matter-of-fact; Brunhilde was living through these events, and working close to the perpetrators, yet claims to have known no more or less of the truth than the butcher down the road.

Smith's Brunhilde is likeable, and shows flashes of humour. She had friends, neighbours and colleagues from the Jewish community. She seems to be telling her story candidly. She tells of her discomfort at seeing how the Nazi leaders held such sway over the rally crowds, and how she and another female colleague were made to applaud.

So should we believe her proclaimed ignorance? Could someone in her position really not know what was actually happening in the concentration camps?

Smith's performance is a tour de force of storytelling. She holds the audience enthralled, without ever rising from her chair at a kitchen table or raising her voice. There are no big theatrical gestures. There are no bells and whistles in the performance or its staging. The deliberate understatement draws you in all the more.

A gradual change in set and lighting is so subtle, and the performance and story so captivating, that it's barely perceptible, and yet perfectly reflects the gradually changing mood.

In the end, most in the audience will be left with questions. Would any of us, in Brunhilde's situation, have realised the terrible reality? And even if we had, what could we have hoped to do about it?

And is there just a chance that, even today, with devices in our pocket that give us access to practically unlimited information, we could still find ourselves duped by people in power?

Now there's something worth thinking about.

A German Life at the Bridge Theatre until 11 May

Photo credit: Helen Maybanks

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