You know you’re onto a loser when (and I counted) five audience members are asleep during your one-hour production. You know you’re onto an even bigger loser when your production is taking place in the mid-afternoon – the one time of day when no-one has a reasonable excuse for being tired. Unless you suffer from narcolepsy of course. So, provided that the audience were not comprised almost entirely from a chance reunion of the Narcoleptic Freedom Fighters (go team!) this was a pretty bad sign. In the true spirit of Brechtian interaction, the cast realised this and all but gave up on us halfway through.With Brecht our attention is necessarily drawn to THEMES over narrative: and the THEME here is that Nazis are pretty bumout blokes. The success of any Brecht play rests on how this central message is dealt with – and here our sleuth of a director has looked for clues in the title. Realising that a Third Reich was probably needed somewhere down the line, they found a picture of Hitler and looped recordings of his speeches as the audience entered. TICK. Similarly, realising that some fear and misery were also pretty much essential, every single character was directed to metronomically swing between these two extremes. Waa waa oooh some Nazis waa waa waa. TICK. Sherlock’s been doing some nifty business today.Some of the blame unfortunately has to lie with the performers, each of whom have their moments but none of them have the requisite versatility to successfully pull off a number of Brecht’s warchetypes. The problems of this production can be nearly summed up through the prevalence of accidental verfremdung. The politically dubious S&M scene (complete with matching leather shorts throughout) and comic-book ‘gulps’ after hearing some bad news did more to alienate me from the production than any of the cunningly literal direction.There were some nice touches dying to get out. The handing out of porridge oats conceptually linking us to the pigs being fed was far too warmly received by an audience who were desperate for some attention. Sadly almost all of the ‘waa waa ooh some Nazis’ business was directed inexplicably at the door. They must have really wanted to leave. And after 45 very long minutes; we did so gratefully.
