There is an instructive early scene in CP Taylor’s play about Germany’s slide into nazism when we hear of the friendship between Beethoven and Goethe, which ended when the composer, living in penury, wrote a begging letter to Goethe, who never responded. Professor Halder (David Tennant), a German academic, recounts this betrayal to his Jewish best friend, Maurice (Elliot Levey), in outraged tones, yet it is he who betrays his friend in the most heinous of ways.
Often considered an examination of how a “good” man is corrupted, the play begins in 1933 and follows Halder’s conversion to nazism, step by step. The most striking thing, first of all, is its size: Vicki Mortimer’s set is confined to a walled-in section of the stage and shorn of all the pomp and symbolism of the Third Reich. It is bare, grey and prison-like. There are only three actors (plus a fourth who emerges in the closing moments) and they are quietly magnificent.
