Real-life story draws uncomfortable parallels between Israel and the Nazis
IWitness Finborough Theatre, London SW10
At a moment when capital punishment is up for public scrutiny, Joshua Sobol's IWitness is timely. It tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who, during the Second World War, repudiated citizenship of the Third Reich and was imprisoned and executed by guillotine in 1943 for refusing to wear a Nazi uniform.
The play opens with Jägerstätter (Mel Raido), stripped to the waist, polishing boots in his cell. He is repeatedly offered his freedom; signing a document would get him off death row in a moment, but he stubbornly rejects it. "I am free to do and say whatever I want. I will polish shoes if I feel like it," he says.
Jägerstätter is not willing to be "saved", either by his benign prison warden, or his friends, who have all signed up to the Nazi cause with various degrees of sincerity. "When a leader breaks the rules of humanity it is the duty of every citizen to break the leader's rules," he says repeatedly as he is marched off to court. "I have broken the rules because our Führer has broken all the rules."
Joshua Sobol is one of Israel's most celebrated playwrights (his 1984 play Ghetto has been performed across the world), and while it is certainly intriguing to watch a Jewish examination of Nazi culpability, IWitness is also an explicit reference to the moment in 2002 when roughly 200 Israeli army reservists signed a petition refusing to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. Their argument, like Jägerstätter's, was that their orders had nothing to do with military defence, but were instead more about aggressive action, in this case "the domination of the Palestinian people".
Jägerstätter, a committed Roman Catholic, refuses to follow orders because wearing the Nazi uniform is not only about defending the Fatherland; it is also about colluding in a not-so-secret secret, namely that thousands of innocent people are being transported to the death camps.
"I am an eyewitness," he tells Father Jochmann (Richard Atwill), who is bewildered that the farmer won't save himself from the guillotine's blade, "to the trains that criss-cross the countryside day and night. Do you ask where those people are being taken to?" he demands. The priest shrugs his shoulders; he knows of no trains; he hasn't heard any rumours.
Weasel words, and through this gripping and intensely acted piece, Sobol and the director Michael Ronen present a cornucopia of the pragmatic corruption that trips through Jägerstätter's cell (delineated very cleverly on the Finborough's tiny stage by semi-transparent plastic strips).
There is the jovially cynical chum (the excellent Atwill, again) who stirs his boss's coffee with his finger and pokes the boss's wife every day, just to remind himself that he is alive; the virtuous Nazi (Jonathan Bryan) who thinks that the Third Reich is all about the defence of the realm; the warden (James Henry Parker) who follows orders; the doctor (Lucinda Millward) who wants to save her own skin; and the ex-girlfriend (Leah Muller) who just wants to escape in a bubble of hot love.
These are not stereotypical nasty Nazis and Nazi sympathisers, just ordinary people going along with the status quo, which, of course, is the point of the whole play. What would you do? Only Jägerstätter's steadfast and equally religious wife (Natalie Radmall-Quirke) and their small daughter (Lucja Nowicka/Natalia Tatarka) know that excuses such as "I'm only human" or "I was only following orders" are not, in the end, enough.
Raido is thoroughly convincing as Jägerstätter, although with his semi-naked physique, beard and thundering self-belief he does have some quasi-Christlike moments. That might be why Ronen has him cleaning a motorbike and dreaming of what appears to be a robustly sexual home life back in the Austrian countryside. He doesn't want to be a martyr; he knows he is no saint.
He is told that his cremated ashes will be blown anonymously away on the wind. That his story is now held up to mirror behaviour within the Israeli army itself is a fascinating postscript.
For more information go to: http://finboroughtheatre.itgo.com
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