THE INVESTIGATION. To 10 November.
London
THE INVESTIGATION
by Peter Weiss adapted by Jean Baudrillard.
Young Vic To 10 November 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 7, 10 Nov 2.30pm.
Runs 1hr 30min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7922 2922.
www.youngvic.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 November.
Simply staged, devastatingly presented.
From Holocaust to Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide: the 20th-century in a deadly nutshell. Dorcy Rugamba and Isabelle Gyselinx bring their adaptation of the documentary drama Peter Weiss drew from the 1963 Frankfurt investigation into Auschwitz to reflect on the 1990s slaughter in their homeland of Rwanda.
Accounts from prisoners and guards collide, witnesses clash. Those in charge seem to have known little, while those who suffered have sharp memories. An individual outburst of persistent Nazism comes as a shock. The point about the aftermath of flaring ethnic violence is that what could not have happened did happen. And something so irrational can only be explained in terms of what happened. Any explanation has to be pieced together from the evidence.
In London (alas, the only British performances), Urwintore’s Rwandan production illuminates the Nazi death process. Played in their own country, the drama’s European events must have sprung out with shocking familiarity. It’s chilling enough to realise any of these seven players could have been caught up by the slaughter of the 1990s.
The performance is in French, with projected English translation. Except for one scene. It follows a passage where the company sit in a line on the platform-stage, speaking serial allegations. One actor, young and innocent-looking, calmly answers for all the accused.
Suddenly, there’s a flare-up between an accuser and accused, and as the language veers from French and translation stops, the linguistic gap mirrors the confusion of traumatic times, before events are replayed in French. Apparent recollection of horrors assimilated into people’s lives has suddenly been stripped away, showing raw nerves living on beneath.
One feature of the Auschwitz extreme is its impact on the notion of civilised behaviour. A camp officer can show untypical kindness, his wife knit a garment for a prisoner’s child. But for the inmates of Auschwitz every possession, every advantage that can be scraped becomes an essential for individual survival.
A bare stage provides different levels and a couple of bars suggest courtroom stands. But neither script nor production needs more than the unsentimental, well-judged performances provided in this riveting 90 minutes.
Cast: Leon Athanase Mandali, Lyliane Matabishi, Samuel Muteba, Kenny Nkundwa, Thomas Nyarwaya, Olivier Rangira, Aimable Twahirwa.
Directors: Dorcy Rugamba, Isabelle Gyselinx.
Designer: Fabienne Damiean.
Lighting: Manu Deck.
2007-11-07 12:25:59