{"id":1766,"date":"2019-04-14T16:37:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-14T15:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1766"},"modified":"2019-04-14T17:14:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-14T16:14:07","slug":"propwatch-the-glasses-in-a-german-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2019\/04\/propwatch-the-glasses-in-a-german-life.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the glasses in A German Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Maggie Smith clutches a pair of glasses throughout her 100-minute monologue in A German Life<\/a><\/em>. She holds them in her right hand mostly, but never puts them on: they\u2019re more decoy than accessory. As Brunhilde Pomsel \u2013 who worked as a secretary to Goebbels during the war, and whose reminiscences are the basis of this play by Christopher Hampton \u2013 Smith feints and dithers, quavers around remorse and memory. She never quite lets the memory come into focus. She never puts on the glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pomsel lives in a Munich care home, and Smith spends the play sitting at a table and addressing us, her unseen interviewer. The actor doesn\u2019t so much draw us in as literally draw close without us noticing. The wooden floor in Anna Fleischle\u2019s<\/a> cunning design inches imperceptibly forward until by the end Smith is at the front of the Bridge Theatre\u2019s thrust stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maggie Smith\u2019s voice \u2013 witty, snide, imperious \u2013 has always led her arsenal. She slides under lines and then flips them out like pancakes. Instinctively funny, she has to quash our giggles at words like \u2018vacuum cleaner.\u2019 Now 84 \u2013 and absent from the stage for 12 years \u2013 Smith teases any anxiety that her memory may not be up to it. Pomsel begins by apologising for her faulty recall, and Smith pulls at pauses, dithers over details, at times sounds as if lines are slipping through her fingers. Are the glasses there in case she needs to reach for the script? It\u2019s like watching a tightrope virtuoso deliberately make the wire wobble, yet remain aloft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pomsel<\/a> spent much of the war in Goebbels\u2019 propaganda unit. She is a witness to history who doesn\u2019t, can\u2019t, recognise what she saw. She didn\u2019t read the papers that came across her desk, she says, even though she typed them. Her proudest achievement is not<\/em> reading a file about the brutal execution of Sophie Scholl, who led an ill-fated resistance movement against Hitler. Details escape her, but she never forgets how much she earned. She joins the party (to secure a job, she says) but is vague about the extent of Jewish persecution. Her best friend disappears, and she doesn\u2019t let herself wonder where. What she knew \u2013 what she allowed herself to know \u2013 is always lost in the mist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Incomprehensible\u2019 is a word she falls back on \u2013 for example, to describe both her first Jewish boss, and a boyfriend\u2019s articles for the Nazi press. Pomsel boasts of how smart she was at school and how she excelled in shorthand \u2013 but also insists she was far too stupid to understand politics, even as she was at the heart of the political machine. She declares she decided to tell the truth to her Russian interrogators after the war, only to lie about not really meeting Goebbels \u2013 even though she had sat beside him at a dinner party in his home. Is she aware of her contradictions? Can’t she just put on the damn glasses?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She’s a witness to history who won’t recognise what she saw<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The banality of evil<\/a> may be an over-worked concept. Hannah Arendt\u2019s phrase, coined to define the petty focus of Hitler\u2019s bureaucrat, Adolf Eichmann, itself now risks banality. Here the mundanity of many of Pomsel\u2019s recollections (canteen chats, mending ladders in stockings) does more than flirt with dullness. She doesn\u2019t distinguish between the horrors of genocide and her pleasure in knowing a little woman who can adjust a borrowed outfit. Her work doesn\u2019t directly cause death (or does it?), but she contributes to death\u2019s work. I\u2019m not sure if the play and Jonathan Kent\u2019s production are always in command of their ambiguities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout, as the monologue\u2019s meander becomes pointed\ntowards the war\u2019s end, Pomsel will often refer to \u2018we\u2019. What \u2018we\u2019 thought or\nfelt, or didn\u2019t. \u2018We\u2019 sometimes suggests family, or colleagues, or the entire\nnon-Jewish German population. It\u2019s another decoy: for every we there\u2019s a they,\nfor every us an other. But must the audience become complicit in Pomsel\u2019s \u2018we\u2019,\nher convenient myopia and refusal of remorse? Smith, a revered star, isn\u2019t courting\napproval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith has rarely taken on political drama. She\u2019s more\noften seen in period costume \u2013 Shakespeare and Restoration drama on stage,\nHogwarts and Downton on screen. She is celebrated more for the play of\npersonality than the parsing of ethics. So it seems significant that she for\nthis late stage appearance she selects a role deep in the moral murk. At times,\nwhen Pomsel can\u2019t but acknowledge the human cost of the Nazi programme, Smith\nputs anguished hands to her eyes, grasping the glasses tightly. But even so,\nshe doesn\u2019t put them on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo above by Helen Maybanks<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maggie Smith clutches a pair of glasses throughout her 100-minute monologue in A German Life. She holds them in her right hand mostly, but never puts them on: they\u2019re more decoy than accessory. As Brunhilde Pomsel \u2013 who worked as a secretary to Goebbels during the war, and whose reminiscences are the basis of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[552,489,322,321,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-anna-fleischle","9":"tag-bridge-theatre","10":"tag-props","11":"tag-propwatch","12":"tag-theatre","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1766"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1771,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions\/1771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}