Carl Zuckmayer’s play is based with
surprising fidelity upon actual events in Berlin in 1906, when
small-time criminal Wilhelm Voigt, driven to extremes by even pettier
bureaucracy, impersonated a captain in the Prussian guards,
commandeered a squad of genuine troops, occupied the town hall of the
outlying district of Köpenick and “confiscated” the mayor’s treasury.
Mordant commentary upon the old Prussian military ethos and the
Germans’ readiness to obey instructions given by anyone who seemed to
be in authority had some relevance in the run-up to World War I (the
setting has been shifted slightly to 1910), but even more when the play
was written. It premièred in 1931, shortly before the accession to
power of that little man who looked so like the bank clerk in the
public toilet in Act Two.
Zuckmayer’s version of Voigt is a Brechtian species of anti-hero, frank
about being crooked but outraged that he remains alive and free when
better folk than him are in prison or the grave. The play is sometimes
poignant (the scene between Voigt and his sister’s tubercular female
lodger is deeply affecting), but more often savagely satirical:
gold-braided reservists bluster, pen-pushers bark pointlessly and Voigt
finds (as in real life) the Kafkaesque situation whereby he cannot get
a job without a residence permit and vice versa. Director Adrian Noble
plays up the absurdity of it all without devaluing the content; not
knowing the original play, I cannot tell whether Dario Fo was
influenced by the account of the impersonation when writing
Accidental Death Of An Anarchist,
or whether it is Fo who has in turn informed Ron Hutchinson’s
forthright version of the Zuckmayer.
Anthony Ward’s design, against an Expressionist/Cubist city backdrop,
makes full use of the Olivier’s revolve and multi-level capabilities.
In the central role, Antony Sher may have a dodgy accent but repeatedly
hits the emotional bull’s-eye. At times he seems like a more
politically outspoken Chaplin (though not, in fact, the Chaplin of
The Great Dictator). Noble elicits
strong ensemble work from a company featuring a number of NT notables,
and above all the play feels vitally both of its own time(s) and of
ours. However, living in Berlin today, I have to say the urge to obey
is much attenuated; I’ve even, once in a while, seen someone cross an
empty late-night street when the little
Ampelmann on the crossing light is
red.
Written for the Financial
Times.