“Tom
McNab is a Renaissance Man, spanning sport and the arts in a unique
manner,” declares the author’s programme biography, “and
1936 represents his work at its
best.” I do hope not; it would be disheartening to think that the
Munich, Montreal and Lake Placid summer and winter Olympic athletes
whom he coached were as poorly served as the drama of his subject
matter here.
1936 effectively ends in
December 1935, with the vote of the Amateur Athletic Union of the
United States against boycotting the Berlin Olympics in protest at the
Nazi regime’s treatment of Jews. McNab’s play is about the background
to the XI Olympiad, not the Games themselves: about Hitler and
Goebbels’ plans to create a showcase for Nazi Germany, and Leni
Riefenstahl’s intention to document it as flatteringly as possible on
film (each performance of the play is followed by a screening of
extracts from Riefenstahl’s
Olympia);
and about the threatened boycott, as personified in American Olympian
Avery Brundage – bought off by the promise of high title, it is bluntly
claimed – and in prospective competitors Jewish German high jumper
Gretel Bergmann and, of course, black American athlete Jesse Owens. The
point is made, or rather orated in as many words, that the treatment of
black Americans at the time was little or no better than that of German
Jews (comparatively early in the Nazi era, admittedly).
McNab’s drama, however, is not an organic creation. It is spelled out,
not only by the narrator-figure of American journalist William L.
Shirer making matters as explicit as an unsubtle documentary voiceover,
but also by virtually every character. The first scene (after a Shirer
intro) shows German IOC member Theodore Lewald answering a telephone
call for which he and his colleague have clearly been waiting; he
nevertheless finds it essential to say in as many words, “That was
Comte Henri de Baillet-Latour, the president of the International
Olympic Committee. We’ve done it, Carl: the 1936 Olympic Games are
coming to Berlin!” This more or less sets the standard for the
remainder of the 80-minute play. McNab begins, perhaps inadvertently,
to approach interesting territory in the matter of how the Olympic
ideal may become compromised in dealing with more worldly ideologies.
However, to all intents and purposes this is a history lecture poorly
disguised as theatre.
Written for the Financial
Times.