Nobody much under 40 will ever have heard of the Swiss dramatist Max Frisch, although he was one of the big beasts of post-war German-language theatre and died only 20 years ago. So it's heartening to see a first ever production in English of this play from 1951. Graf Oederland was never a big success and the author rewrote it more than once, but it has lots of themes that resonate today -- an inexplicable motiveless murder, an underground armed rebellion, a mythical axeman who roams the land chopping off heads and a bourgeois social order that is crumbling away from inside. There are echoes of Brecht and Buechner in this highly political play in twelve scenes, which seems to foreshadow a lot of late 20th century theatre while also tracing the impact of Nazism.
It starts with a public prosecutor pacing around in his bedroom in the small hours of the morning, obsessed by the case of a bank clerk who has murdered an office caretaker with an axe. The killing is motiveless but the prosecutor tells his wife: 'There are times when I understand him'. The prosecutor disappears into thin air and re-emerges as the reincarnation of Count Oederland ('Wasteland'), a fairytale figure who goes around chopping heads. The story has elements of a psychological mystery, of a social parable about the haves and the have-nots, and of a dark thriller.
This production by the Cerberus company at the Arcola doesn't quite master all these registers. Director Christopher Loscher skilfully marshals a cast of eleven on a tiny angled white platform of a stage; the style is abstract-minimalist, with white designer furniture, and doesn't convey the variety of locations. The murderous axe is too tiny to become a dominant symbol, and the acting is uneven. Evelyn Adams shines brightly in three different parts, while Jacob Trenerry is excellent as Dr Hahn. I also liked Simon Norbury as the prosecutor and Natasha Alderslade as his wife. But this is a flawed play, with characters that never get beyond the two-dimensional, despite the best efforts of the cast.
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