The Inheritance, play by Mathew Lopez, directed by Stephen Daldry, Noël Coward Theatre, London, 9* out of 10

Inspired by the English novelist E. M. Forster “Howards End”, Matthew Lopez' long but never dull play (2 times four hours) is a beautifully written piece full of quiet drama and subtle humour with engaging characters and plots; excellent performances by Kyle Soller, John Benjamin Hickey and a brilliant understated one by Paul Hilton.  Highly recommended for all who like the theatre.

New York City 2016. Eric Glass (Kyle Soller) lives with his boyfriend Toby Darling (Andrew Burnap) in the rent-protected apartment in New York which the family has inhabited since Eric’s grandmother moved in as a young woman and which Eric loves as a part of him. A cloud hangs over his future as the owners of the apartment have started proceedings to bring the tenancy under which he stays there to an end. Eric, modest and self-effacing, tries to live life with Toby and a group of friends all gay men, trying not to think about the changes that losing his beloved home will bring for him and his relationship with Toby. Toby who is outwardly fun, confident prone to outrageous behaviour likes to live day to day, enjoys the good life and contrary to the reliable and thoughtful Eric avoids introspection, thinking about his past and fears longer-term commitment. Eric and Toby also have two older friends a married gay couple, Henry Wilcox (John Benjamin Hickey) and his husband Walter. Henry is a real estate billionaire devoted to his business interest Walter his companion devoted to supporting him. Eric has visited Henry and Walter at the lovely country House in upstate New York not far from New York City.  When Henry and Walter move into an apartment in the same block as Eric and Henry is on a long business trip, Walter and Eric meet several times and develop a friendship based on mutual affection. Walter tells Eric about the support he gave to gay friends and strangers during the height of the deadliness of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s in his beloved house and garden in the countryside and the effect this had on his relationship with Henry. Eric tells Walter about his dream about a stable marriage and about his fears of losing his home. The short but intense period Eric and Walter and their very open communication about the important things in will in around about ways have far-reaching consequences. While they unfold, we follow several other plots concerning Eric, his boyfriend Toby who writes a play and their wannabe actor friend Adam (Samuel H. Levine) and others in their circle of gay young men-friends who are awaiting Hilary Clinton’s election as the first woman President of the United States with keen anticipation.

Inspired by the English novelist E. M. Forster “Howards End”, Matthew Lopez' long play (2 times four hours) is a beautifully written play full of quiet drama and subtle humour with engaging characters and plots as entertaining for straight men and women as for gay men who with very few exceptions make up all characters. For the audience, it feels like binge-watching an amazon prime or Netflix series where one cannot stop watching as one wants to know what happens to all the characters who have walked into one’s life. Apart from E. M. Forster whose spirit has a palpable presence I was reminded of the writing of Armistead Maupin in his “Tales of the City”. The 2 times 4 hours pass rather quickly as the writing, direction and beautiful ensemble acting, with excellent performances by Kyle Soller, John Benjamin Hickey and a brilliant understated one by Paul Hilton. And then there is Vanessa Redgrave with a poignant performance; she who played the character of Henry Wilcox’ wife Ruth in the 1992 Merchant Ivory film adaptation of “Howards End”.

Everything in the theatre starts with good storytelling and here the good story inspired by one of the great English writers of the 20th century E. M. Forster is beautifully extended adapted and written with rhythm, wit and feeling by a talented young playwright. Director and actors have excellent material to work with and they are doing an outstanding job. For anyone who likes straight plays (rather than musicals), this is one not only about being a gay man in New York but also about being a human being of any gender anytime anywhere. Highly recommended for theatregoers and E. M. Forster fans, The Inheritance Parts 1 and 2 having transferred from a successful run at the Young Vic are now booking in London’s Noël Coward Theatre until 19 January 2019. 

https://www.inheritanceplay.com/

   

Matthew Lopez - playwright

   

The Waldheim Waltz, Documentary Film, Austria (2018), written and directed by Ruth Beckermann, 9* out of 10

Ruth Beckermann’s documentary The Waldheim Waltz consisting entirely of archive material, including her own first experiences with using a camera to document political events, is a skilful and timely piece of modern political history. With populism rising, it is also painfully relevant. The Waldheim Waltz has deservedly won several awards including the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. This is highly recommended viewing for anyone interested in modern politics. 


When the artist, writer, filmmaker and public intellectual Ruth Beckermann found a videotape copy of her first experiments with documenting events she was involved in on film and viewed the material, the idea slowly matured to make it the basis of a documentary on the events marking the Austrian presidential election of 1986 which put Austria in the international spotlight - and not in a complimentary way. It was in the run-up to that election that Austria found itself under unwelcome scrutiny from an American human rights NGO, the World Jewish Congress.

A very convenient foundational lie underlying the post-World-War- II re-birth was that in March 1938 Austria and its citizens had been the first victim of Nazi-German aggression. This lie was comforted by the all powers who were allied against Nazi-Germany and guaranteed the country's existence in the Austrian State Treaty of 1955. The catholic-fascist Austrian republic of 1938 had indeed been eliminated and annexed by Hitler’s Germany, but the Austrian people were anything but victims in the process, if one excludes Jews, Roma, communists and a few other courageous political opponents, most of whom were not really ever accepted by the vast majority of their co-citizens as part of the "true" Austrian people. Nevertheless, modern Austria's foundational lie was so convenient to many inside as well as outside of Austria that the country's international image of Mozart, the Sound of Music, Sachertorte and idyllic skiing holidays could cover some very dark and nasty truths of many of its people's willing adherence to Nazi Germany.

And so it came that a tall thin Austrian diplomat and former foreign minister by the name of Kurt Waldheim was proposed as Secretary General of the United Nations by Bruno Kreisky, an Austrian chancellor with Jewish roots, who curried favour with the Austrian people by showing great tolerance towards Austrian politicians with a questionable record during World War II. Kurt Waldheim was appointed Secretary General of the United Nations held this office from 1972 to 1981.

In 1986 Waldheim became a candidate for the Austrian presidency for the Austrian People’s Party, a political party in this overwhelmingly Catholic country. that sees itself as based on Christian values. Waldheim’s campaign got off to a good start when a poster showed his aquiline facial features in front of a panorama of New York City, the twin towers still firmly standing to the left of his smiling portrait proclaiming the slogan: “The man whom the world trusts”.

But then the journalist Hubertus Czernin took the trouble to check on Waldheim’s official military records and found that they contained mention of voluntary memberships in unsavoury Nazi organisations, including a riding club that was part of the Nazi Sturm-Abteilung. A few years later Czernin, to whose memory the film is dedicated, would also play a role in the saga of the reluctant restitution by Austria of a famous painting, Gustav Klimt’s The Woman in Gold to its rightful Jewish owners in the United States, and is fictionally represented in the film of the same name, which dramatized the story and starred Helen Mirren.

Responding to Czernin’s findings was the beginning of the Waldheim Waltz, a dance of unbelievable claims, implausible denials, pretences of falsely righteous indignation, thinly veiled disdain for Jews who dared to be unrelenting in digging up evidence that kept contradicting Waldheim’s ridiculous explanations and forced him into a corner where he would have to choose: either to own up to the truth or continue to occupy the metaphorical dance floor in ever more frantic movements making room for himself with sharp elbows and metal capped dancing shoes.

Kurt Waldheim chose the latter and as his cold-eyed smile turned into a nervous smirk, Ruth Beckermann was there as part of a small group of mainly young intellectuals in Austria who were mostly on the left of the political spectrum and believed that uncovering and telling the truth was indispensable for the future of Austrian society. Despite this not going down well with the large majority of their compatriots who were whipped into an anti-Semitic hate-fest by Waldheim and his campaign managers, they persisted. 

Things really began to take off internationally when historians working with the Word Jewish Congress uncovered documents and a photograph that irrefutably placed Waldheim in the Balkans as the intelligence officer of the notorious General Alexander von Löhr who after the war was executed for war crimes against the civilian population in a brutal German campaign against Yugoslav partisans.

At that point, Waldheim “waltzed” frantically into the public television dominated studios to decry a calumnious campaign against him and the Austrian people no less by a small number of Jews in the United States directed by his Austrian opponents.

For a young Jew from Austria like me, who had left the country over ten years earlier for London because I could not see a professional future there without my Jewishness always being an issue, it was confirmation that my move had been right. I was looking on from my posting with Bank of America in San Francisco and London as the international reporting of the Waldheim Affair unfolded and I remember how very relieved and happy I felt about having left my country of birth.

For the few young Jews then living in Austria including Ruth Beckermann the political climate turned from uncomfortable to downright nasty.

With archive material filmed by her younger self and collected from many other sources, Beckermann chronicles a key episode in Austria’s history which is also a timely contribution to the study of populist strategies which have now gained a stronger and visible foothold worldwide. She lets the protagonists speak for themselves including some very unpleasant Austrian vox-pop 1986-style. She also helpfully provides context. There is the German Chancellor Kohl standing with Ronald Reagan by the graves of members of the SS; there is an interview with Waldheim as Secretary General with the French television, where he explains that as Secretary General of the United Nations he does not have armies but he has no one he is accountable to no President above him, no Parliament. He is the highest moral authority on earth. In the light of what transpires about his prodigious talent for being economical with the truth, this interview turns out to be the height of irony and cynicism.

Ruth Beckermann's voice as she reflects on her own role at the time seems to be tinged with monotonic sadness. Yet resistance was not entirely useless: It arguably prevented a first-round win for Waldheim by a whisker, forcing him to waltz ever more frantically against his will. And the convenient lie to the world that Austrians were the first victims of Nazi-Germany became untenable. Although Austrian elected him he was now the man whom the world distrusts and did not receive a single invitation to a state visit during his tenure.

But time went by and a new populism became mainstream not only in Austria. In 2018 a coalition government under the 32-year-old Austrian People’s Party Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is arguably the most skilful and successful of right-leaning populist governments in the European Union and beyond. Kurz’ idealised young and determined face adorns Newsweek Magazines cover page in October 2018 with the ominous title “Austria Rising”. There will be more battles to fight and document for Ruth Beckermann and her friends.

It has also occurred to me that The Waldheim Waltz should be watched as a double bill with Quentin Tarantino’s World War II fantasy “Inglorious Basterds” as a kind of allegory with the Inglorious Basterds depicting the World Jewish Congress and SS Colonel Hans Landa providing a smoother more elegant version of Kurt Waldheim in his Wehrmacht years. The character of Hans Landa is brilliantly played in an Oscar-winning performance by the Austrian actor Christoph Waltz – and here the title of Ruth Beckermann’s documentary, Waldheim’s Waltz takes a second equally resonant meaning.

Even without the Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds as a companion piece, Ruth Beckermann’s deservedly multi-award winning documentary is a brilliantly devised and compelling piece of recent political history of great relevance to current events. Don’t miss it.


http://www.thewaldheimwaltz.com/en/

Ruth Beckermann

   

Dust, written and performed by Milly Thomas, directed by Sara Joyce, Trafalgar Studios, London, 9* out of 10

A devastatingly honest and heartfelt play about depression and suicide which manages to be moving and funny too. Milly Thomas' writing and performance go under the skin; an unforgettable tour de force. 

Alice (Milly Thomas) a young woman suffering from depression looks at her own lifeless body on a slab in the mortuary. As her inner suffering has become unbearable she has tried to escape it by ending her life. But here she is now, a ghostly presence among those she has left behind: her grieving father, her devastated mother, her speechless brother, her comfort-seeking boyfriend, her practical busy-body of an aunt. Telling her story of the time leading up to her suicide and observing the time following it, she slips into all these characters with devastating honesty and a wicked sense of humour. She becomes increasingly aware of the big hole she has left behind in the lives of those she loved and who loved her and sees herself and her own life in a new light. But once an attempt at suicide succeeds there is no way back.

Milly Thomas performs her own play in the Trafalgar Studios. Her writing is true, gripping from beginning to end and at times very funny. Her performance goes under the skin, an unforgettable tour de force. The intimate space of the small stage of Studio 3, direction (by Sara Joyce), mirror, lighting all contribute. But Thomas' facility as the narrator for inhabiting all the characters and switching seamlessly between them is outstanding.

The play has been performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017, at the Soho Theatre in 2018 and now at Trafalgar Studios. It’s a reminder of the young talent in writing and performing which shines in the UK and for which the Edinburgh Fringe and the smaller London theatres with their eager audiences are an invaluable incentive and showcase.  

For those who have observed depression from close by or suffered from it themselves this one-woman play will be painful and poignant, yet it is also compelling and rewarding. No doubt, Milly Thomas knows what she is writing and speaking about here. "Dust" is also a piece of activism in the best sense, as Thomas is working with the Samaritans, an organisation dedicated to suicide- prevention. Every day and night the Samaritans save many valuable lives. Whenever they succeed,  they prevent the grief and lasting pain that one person’s suicide leaves behind in the heart of their family and friends.

Unfortunately, "Dust" has come to the end of its run at Trafalgar Studios, London. Those who have not seen it and would like to, will have to keep an eye out for a future run.

 Milly Thomas in "Dust"