THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Lillian Hellman had an, ahem, difficult relationship with the truth to the extent that even on her deathbed she was in the midst of a notorious libel suit against Mary McCarthy over the fictive embellishments to her various memoirs. However, as well as being a great polemicist for left wing causes she also had an eye for the market and before this play produced two Broadway hits, The Children's Hour (1934) and The Little Foxes (1939), gripping thrillers both made into hit movies.
Watch on the Rhine represented a change of gear even though it too was rapidly filmed with Bette Davis and Paul Lukas, the latter winning the Oscar for Best Actor. It's a dramatic call to arms for a united response to the rise of fascism which at the time contradicted the position of Hellman's fellow communist sympathizers and isolated her.
It is amazing now to consider that when this premiered on Broadway in April 1941 America was still not in the Second World War. The isolationist movements which held sway on the US government at the time were laced with antisemitism and viewed the pleas from the Jews to intervene as merely "special interests," at odds with America's real needs. This is what Hellman rightly railed against and what gave the play a burning topicality at the time.
The problem for a revival however, is that from today's perspective it can appear a historical curiosity, or at worst a museum piece, and drawing parallels with today's 'fascism' is rather pushing it.
Director Ellen McDougall has however conjured a handsomely mounted production which is probably better than the piece deserves. Basia Bińkowska's sturdy and beautiful art deco set, framed by a giant proscenium, confidently places us within a stately mansion outside Washington.
It is spring 1940 and Sara Muller (Caitlin Fitzgerald) the daughter of a comfortably wealthy WASP family has fled the war in Germany after 17 years to return home. With her is husband Kurt and their three incredibly bright and personable children. The rather overbearing matriarch of the family, Fanny, who is all a flutter receiving them, has had a troubled relationship with her daughter while brother David (Geoffrey Streatfield) is thrilled to have them back. Eventually it comes out that Kurt was deeply involved in anti fascist activities in both Spain and Germany which made life difficult for them but they appear to want to settle in the US, or do they?
Another house guest is Teck de Brancovis, an impoverished Romanian Count who has been conspiring with the Germans while in Washington. His interest is spurred in Kurt, who is carrying a locked suitcase. This, it turns out, contains $23,000, intended to finance underground operations in Germany and which he intends to take back. Teck, the cad count, perfectly embodied by John Light, blackmails Kurt by threatening to expose him.
But all that drama is mostly confined to the second act and until then it is rather a slow burn. McDougall has cast it perfectly with especially impressive turns from the children, with the impish Bertie Caplan as Bodo, the youngest and most precocious one, a particular stand out.
The piece has a serio-comic air and only slowly do we get to know this large cast of characters. This drawing room comedy style is at odds however with the urgency of what Hellman is trying to accomplish and this leaves the piece rather stilted.
Patricia Hodge brings her usual finesse to the part of Fanny and perfectly captures the haughtiness and careless disdain of her class for the Europeans' plight. German actor Mark Waschke impresses too and deftly fleshes out Kurt, a character who could have just been a cypher. His character is both utopian and imprecise and this gets to the heart of the problem with the piece. It continually elides that the character would and should have been Jewish. Hellman sadly, though understandably for the time, figured that by making him more 'universal' he'd be more palatable to the Broadway audience.
Dougall has correctly made a few small alterations to the text to draw out the underlying Jewishness in the text and Musical Director Josh Middleton too has, in a most scholarly way, interpolated the piece with perfectly chosen music by Jewish composers in an attempt to re-balance the question.
At the end Fanny exclaims "Well, we've been shaken out of the magnolias", which neatly sums up their journey. This is a revival which has taken vast pains to honor Hellman, her position and her legacy and is worth seeing to witness such a solid, old fashioned, well-made play, but the piece remains a problem to be solved.
