A German Life
\nby Christopher Hampton
\nCo-produced by Adelaide Festival
\nand The Gordon Frost Organisation.
\nDunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre.<\/p>\n
February 23. Tickets $ 30 – $109.
\nBookings: adelaidefestival.com.au.
\nDuration: 1 hour 30 minutes. No interval.
\nUntil March 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have forgotten such a lot,\u201d concedes Brunhilde Pomsel, aged 102, \u201cAnd then \u2026things surge up into my mind. Things I can remember in the minutest detail.\u201d<\/p>\n
This happens when you get old, but in the case of Pomsel, the sweeping narrative of her long life includes her experiences at the epicentre of the German Third Reich. What she knows, and, perhaps, chooses to forget, still matters – and raises questions about the struggle between obedience and responsibility.<\/p>\n
Interviewing her for an acclaimed Austrian documentary, entitled A German Life<\/em>, the film-makers gathered 235 pages of transcription, much of which never made the cut. From that material, playwright Christopher Hampton assembled this compelling 90 minute monologue for the stage.<\/p>\n Like the clerical secretary, Traudi Junge, dutiful to Hitler even in the last days of the bunker (as depicted in the 2004 film, Downfall<\/em>) Brunhilde Pomsel is a young, unworldly stenographer who ends up taking shorthand for Joseph Goebbels.<\/p>\n From the geriatric home where she lives, Pomsel describes her mid-teen life in pre-war Germany, then casually notes the rise of anti-semitism and Nazi dominance. But she also has a friend Eva, who is Jewish, and Pomsel works for Jewish employers. By 1933 she is employed at the Broadcasting Corporation and sees senior staff fired and sent to concentration camps.<\/p>\n Brunhilde is appalled watching Goebbels addressing a huge rally \u2013 \u2018This quiet, elegant man we saw in the office, transformed into a demented midget.\u2019 She sees things, but has no framework. Remorse breaks through when recalling the fate of the young martyr, Sophie Scholl, and Eva\u2019s disappearance to Auschwitz.<\/p>\n Neil Armfield\u2019s astutely understated production, premiering at the Adelaide Festival, is, as he says, \u201cas much about our contemporary world as Hitler\u2019s Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n Dale Ferguson\u2019s set, a functional room in an aged care facility, is warmly lit by Nigel Levings. Alan John\u2019s introspective score (performed live by cellist, Catherine Finnis) combines with projected newsreel images of the Reich.<\/p>\n The extraordinary solo performance by Robyn Nevin brings Brunhilde fully into focus. In perfect accent, she captures her intelligence and ambition, but also her lack of agency as a young woman who, seated next to Goebbels at dinner, is utterly ignored by him. Nevin\u2019s vivid, unsentimental portrait of Pomsel in old age is splendidly managed.<\/p>\n The play asks us the perennial question. What would we do in the face of tyranny? At what point would we act ? As Brunhilde said in 2013- \u201cPeople don\u2019t care. They watch all the dreadful things in Syria, then they switch off the TV and go out for dinner.\u201c A<\/em> German Life<\/em> is an uncomfortable challenge to our own time.<\/p>\n \u201cRobyn Nevin is outstanding\u201d The Australian<\/em>. Online. February 24, 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A German Life by Christopher Hampton Co-produced by Adelaide Festival and The Gordon Frost Organisation. Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre. February 23. Tickets $ 30 – $109. Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au. Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes. No interval. Until March 14. \u201cI have forgotten such a lot,\u201d concedes Brunhilde Pomsel, aged 102, \u201cAnd then \u2026things surge up into my mind. Things I can remember in the minutest detail.\u201d This happens when you get old, but in the case of Pomsel, the sweeping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,5,11,18,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-41","category-archive","category-festival","category-interstate","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3269,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions\/3269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}