Arrive early, and also you’ll see the solid tidy a load of junk: Nicola and Philipp are sorting their lifeless dad’s stuff. When the play begins, the stage is evident – apart from a watercolour stashed within the attic. It’s a tame sepia view of a church with a signature that appears awfully like “A. Hitler”. “The Hitler?” gasps Nicola’s husband. Nicely, sure.
In Marius von Mayenburg’s snappy 2022 play, set in Berlin, the wrangling sibs (Dorothea Myer-Bennett and John Heffernan, each terrifically narky) and their spouses are flummoxed. They enlist an professional (a crisp Jane Horrocks in arthouse specs) whose grandpapa was Hitler’s curator. She finds a mysterious purchaser (Angus Wright) and her valuation eases the slide into fibs and filth. The household boasted anti-Nazi credentials (“not least for aesthetic causes”), however should now enhance the portray’s backstory. Heffernan’s pale T-shirt says “Faust” – he sells his soul with out a battle.
Tripping everybody up by means of the ethical quagmire is Judith, Philipp’s Jewish spouse (a bemused, affronted Jenna Augen), inconveniently discussing different elements of the provenance. “Can we not speak about artwork with out bringing within the Holocaust!” harrumphs Nicola, however it isn’t attainable. Anna Fleischle’s design patches the home with brick, tiles, clean home windows – layers of historical past and denial.
Patrick Marber’s punchy staging usually locations individuals in sq. formation, swivelling to snarl in all instructions. Characters fitfully flip to us to relate, tetchily, or are pinned in Richard Howell’s tight circles of sunshine. Having begun in squabbles, the play will get stranger. Nicola’s husband (Gunnar Cauthery), throbbing with tetanus and putrid with plum jam, embodies the tell-tale coronary heart of nationwide guilt. Nobody can talk about historical past with out themselves getting antisemitic. Historical past received’t keep put prior to now.
Nachtland isn’t an actual phrase in German, however suggests one thing like nightscape, a spot of darkness. In Maja Zade’s spicy translation and with a superb solid, it’s all, as the client says, “fairly robust pepper”. Von Mayenburg doesn’t go deep, however prods fashionable Germany’s sore spots with scary vigour.
