Arrive early, and you’ll see the cast tidy a load of junk: Nicola and Philipp are sorting their dead dad’s stuff. When the play begins, the stage is clear – except for a watercolour stashed in the attic. It’s a tame sepia view of a church with a signature that looks awfully like “A. Hitler”. “The Hitler?” gasps Nicola’s husband. Well, yes.
In Marius von Mayenburg’s snappy 2022 play, set in Berlin, the wrangling sibs (Dorothea Myer-Bennett and John Heffernan, both terrifically narky) and their spouses are flummoxed. They enlist an expert (a crisp Jane Horrocks in arthouse specs) whose grandpapa was Hitler’s curator. She finds a mysterious buyer (Angus Wright) and her valuation eases the slide into fibs and filth. The family boasted anti-Nazi credentials (“not least for aesthetic reasons”), but must now boost the painting’s backstory. Heffernan’s faded T-shirt says “Faust” – he sells his soul without a struggle.
Tripping everyone up through the moral quagmire is Judith, Philipp’s Jewish wife (a bemused, affronted Jenna Augen), inconveniently discussing other aspects of the provenance. “Can we not talk about art without bringing in the Holocaust!” harrumphs Nicola, but it isn’t possible. Anna Fleischle’s design patches the house with brick, tiles, blank windows – layers of history and denial.
Patrick Marber’s punchy staging often places people in square formation, swivelling to snarl in all directions. Characters fitfully turn to us to narrate, tetchily, or are pinned in Richard Howell’s tight circles of light. Having begun in squabbles, the play gets stranger. Nicola’s husband (Gunnar Cauthery), throbbing with tetanus and putrid with plum jam, embodies the tell-tale heart of national guilt. No one can discuss history without themselves getting antisemitic. History won’t stay put in the past.
Nachtland isn’t a real word in German, but suggests something like nightscape, a place of darkness. In Maja Zade’s spicy translation and with an excellent cast, it is all, as the buyer says, “pretty strong pepper”. Von Mayenburg doesn’t go deep, but prods modern Germany’s sore spots with provoking vigour.
At Young Vic, London, until 20 April
