Reviews 2005
Reviews 2005
✭✭✭✭✩
by Peter Krummeck, directed by Christopher Weare
ACTS, Toronto Fringe Festival, Glen Morris Studio Theatre, Toronto
July 7-16, 2005
“A Man for Our Times”
Very few of the 134 plays at this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival are come from outside Toronto, much less outside Canada. One of the most notable of these is “Bonhoeffer”, presented by ACTS (African Community Theatre Service) of Cape Town, South Africa. “Bonhoeffer” is written by and stars white South African writer and director Peter Krummeck, who with Archbishop Desmond Tutu developed ACTS, a reconciliation-through-drama workshop process, in defiance of the law during the Apartheid era.
Over its 75 minutes and seven scenes, “Bonhoeffer” traces the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) one of the most important Christian theologians of the 20th century. The play begins and ends with Bonhoeffer imprisoned in Nazi Germany. He attempts to explain the many decisions that have brought him to his situation. He helped Jews escape into Switzerland, he formed a group that became the major focus of Christian opposition in Germany while his own Lutheran church did nothing, he returned from safety in New York to Germany because he felt he actively had to fight evil and he was a member of the group inside the Abwehr who failed to assassinate Hitler in 1944. His last years were spent in the concentration camp at Flossenbürg where he was hanged for treason.
The focus of the play is the question of how a Christian is to act when confronted with evil. The image that recurs throughout the play is of watching a maniac driving a car toward a crowd of people. Does the true Christian remain a pacifist? Does he do nothing and hope to comfort the people after they’re injured? Or does he try to stop the driver? As Bonhoeffer realized in his famous formulation, “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”.
The play follows the familiar structure of one-person plays about famous people by finding them a some point near the end of their lives narrating while acting out the events that have led him to that point. As author Krummeck begins in this way but gradually has Bonhoeffer address us directly as people not of his time. A device which is supposed to break down the fourth wall here curiously has the opposite effect. Bonhoeffer addresses us as if through a wall of glass while we sit helpless to do anything but watch his fate unfold. Krummeck thus simply and brilliantly has the situation of the audience parallel that of Bonhoeffer’s pacifist Christian.
Krummeck’s performance is amazing. Usually the one-person show is used as a vehicle to show off the actor. Here Krummeck disappears so deeply into the character that we truly feel we are watch Bonhoeffer, not an actor playing that role. He gets the accent down perfectly of an educated German who has learned British English. More importantly, he makes a decent intelligent, self-effacing man vitally interesting. We see a man whose simple heeding of his conscience leads him to martyrdom, without any clichéd histrionics--rather with the sad knowledge that given the time and the place of his life no other outcome could be expected.
The play premiered in 2002 but has become even more relevant. Bonhoeffer’s statement to his keepers (whom he also plays) that their hate-mongering Christianity is not his Christianity, is chilling in light of how religions of peace continue to be distorted into religions of hatred. Bonhoeffer’s position as a man of peace in a time of war offers an important touchstone for people today. Krummeck’s play, his brilliant performance and Christopher Weare’s clear-sighted direction make this one of the must-see plays of the festival. After Toronto, the play will travel to Winnipeg (July 20-30), Saskatoon (Aug. 5-14), Edmonton (Aug. 19-25) and Vancouver (Sept. 10-16). See it.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Peter Krummeck as Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
2005-07-21
Bonhoeffer