Farewell Mister Haffmann at Park Theatre review: this Nazi farce is brutally, depressingly, absurd

The premise is brutally absurd. In occupied Paris in 1942, Jewish jeweller Joseph Haffmann offers to transfer his business to his gentile employee Pierre Vigneau, if Pierre will conceal him from the Nazis. Pierre’s counter-offer is to announce he is sterile and insist Joseph impregnates his wife Isabelle.

Sweeping comparisons are made between the subsequent sexual jealousy Pierre feels and the moral accommodations he makes to thrive under fascism. Interesting ideas about the way ethnicity and authenticity are commodified and policed are buried in a pileup of farcical developments. This culminates in a dinner of suckling pig for the disguised Haffmann (“there’s always a first time!”), the Vigneaus and cartoonish versions of Hitler’s real-life ambassador to Paris Otto Abetz and his cacklingly vulgar French wife. It’s all played jarringly for laughs.