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Nachtland

 
Roger Kay Review by Roger Kay 3 Published: 4 Dec 2025 Lantern Theatre Show Dates: 2 Dec 2025-5 Dec 2025

Three years ago, the comedian Jimmy Carr hosted a television debate on whether paintings created by reprehensible artists should be destroyed. The controversial nature of this show elicited criticism, but it did raise the moral question of art provenance.

Von Mayenburg’s biting satire asks difficult questions

This theme is developed by Marius von Mayenburg in his modern satire Nachtland. Two siblings, Nicola and Philip (Lilith Leonard and Gabriel Oprea), are going through their deceased father’s house. This painstaking and emotionally fraught task is brought to a halt by the discovery of a painting in the attic, seemingly by Adolf Hitler.

They employ an art expert (Sarah Widass), who is convinced of its authenticity. The market for Nazi memorabilia is vast and international. However, a genuine Hitler painting would significantly raise the stakes, especially if provenance could be established.

Philip’s wife, Judith (Sophie Delevine), is of Jewish heritage and becomes increasingly troubled by unfolding events. It turns out that while in Vienna, Hitler frequently used a Jewish framing company for his watercolours, Samuel Morgenstern, whose fate would later be sealed by the seismic events of the Third Reich. The deep dive into family history reveals further disquieting details from the Nazi era which, coupled with the underlying monetary aspect, leads to difficult family conversations that threaten long-term relationship rifts.

This ACT Brighton production makes a creditable stab at a tricky piece of theatre. After an uneven start, some of the performances grow, notably Delevine’s righteous indignation. Doubtless this production will hit its stride, especially if the performers are able to avoid a slight tendency to mirror each other’s energy.

Marius von Mayenburg’s extraordinary The Ugly One is probably his best-known work, but his most recent offering, Nachtland, has political and societal prescience, exploring identity, culture, guilt and the rise of the right.

Does a piece of art have intrinsic artistic and financial value, or is it inextricably linked to its creator? And if the creator is the architect of the Holocaust, is it morally correct to profit from the sale? Two ideas can be simultaneously true of course. Von Mayenburg’s biting satire asks difficult questions.

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The Blurb:

A sharp, jagged satire from one of Germany's foremost playwrights asking uncomfortable questions of us all.