It’s a great idea. In Marius von Mayenburg’s “mordant satire”, here getting its British premiere after opening in Berlin in 2022, a German family falls apart as it argues over what to do with a painting by Hitler. It’s one from his early days in Vienna, discovered while clearing out their late father’s attic. Is it a much-needed cash windfall, as the angry sister thinks. Is it a lovely memento of dad, as the mild-mannered brother thinks. Is it a stain on them all, as his Jewish partner insists.
It’s like Yasmina Reza’s comedy Art. Instead of an all-white painting that prompts three friends to fall out, it is a painting of a church by Adolf Hitler. Can you profit from Nazism without tainting your soul? Or if you take a stand against it, as the spiffy neo-fascist who arrives to bid for it alleges, should you also take a stand against Wagner, Renoir, Kant, Voltaire or any artist tainted by antisemitism? Can we ever be morally pure? Shouldn’t we move on from the past, not be defined by it?
• The Nazi comedy that takes swipes at the left, right and centre
All that and many more debating points. You may well have a lively journey home discussing it all. For all the excellence of the cast, though, and for all the stripped-back poise of Patrick Marber’s production and Anna Fleischle’s thrust-stage design, I could never surrender to it as a piece of storytelling. Right from the sour start, the fractious siblings are mere mouthpieces for opposing views. Soft, silly Philipp (John Heffernan) talks about Jewishness with a clumsiness that is hard to credit. Fiery Nicola (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) is just narky, which makes it unsurprising when she pours petrol on the Israel-Palestine debate.
Mind you, as the Jewish Judith (Jenna Augen) starts her weary yet confident process of renouncing the others, it looks as if the drama might take off. Yet von Mayenburg, crisply translated by Maja Zade, raises topics more vivid than the humans spouting them. Do we care when Nicola’s husband catches something bad from a rusty nail? Or for a sequence that goes a bit Indecent Proposal meets Moral Maze when the far-right Kahl (Angus Wright) tries to woo Judith?
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There is a smart moment of magic realism near the end, where myth dances with satire. Otherwise, elegantly done as it is, Nachtland is too comfy with its contrivances. And it got very few laughs on my visit. I love the idea of it, but it made me go, “Oh, come off it,” at least as much as it made me go, “Ooh, do go on.”
★★✰✰✰
95min (without an interval)
Ends April 20, youngvic.org
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