Penelope Wilton achieves a perfect mix of passion and authority in this affecting portrait of a woman resisting the tyranny of the Nazis.
Her performance vibrates with indignation, yet is skilfully measured — it’s a study of heartbreak, but also of grace. Martin Hutson is superb as her son, a man of ironclad principles whose wit and defiance can’t in the end prevent his mental and physical decline at the hands of the tyrants.
Hutson is lawyer Hans Litten, seized in a midnight raid after the Nazis sweep to power in 1933. He’s transported to a concentration camp where beatings and other horrors await. His offence? The nerve, in 1931, to summon Hitler as a witness at the trial of four rogue stormtroopers who stood accused of murder. Litten humiliated the man who aspired to lead Germany, stripping away his mystique and now, two years later, Hitler is determined to get his revenge. Mark Hayhurst’s play cuts between Litten’s sufferings and the efforts of Wilton’s Irmgard, who becomes a campaigner on his behalf and narrates his story, addressing the audience in a style that’s intimate and intelligent.
Although there are harrowing scenes of torture, the tone is restrained. We’re shown that Nazism wasn’t all jackbooted thuggery. Instead, it sometimes came in a creepily suave package, embodied by the excellent John Light’s Gestapo officer Dr Conrad, who beneath a smooth exterior is uncompromisingly brutish.
The exchanges between Irmgard and Conrad are the strongest part of Jonathan Church’s unshowy production. It takes a while to exert its grip, but this is a history lesson with a heart.
Ends Saturday March 14, (0845 481 1870, www.trh.co.uk)
