The Arsonists

There were a lot of things I liked about this production at the Royal Court, though it didn't really knock my socks off.  Dominic Cooke has intelligently paired this play with Ionesco's Rhinoceros, another play about people being 'in denial' (not a phrase used in the 1950s).  Max Frisch's 1958 play is part of a European non-realist tradition, mixing elements of the theatre of the absurd and elements of Brechtian theatre, such as the chorus.  Alistair Beaton, in a refreshing change from modern practice, has simply translated the play rather than adapted it.  Director Ramin Gray and designer Anthony Ward place the play in a minimalist white box of a set from which the actors occasionally step out to address the audience.  Biedermann (Will Keen) and his wife, insufferably middle class, fall prey to the two arsonists who put petrol drums in their loft because they believe in trust, tolerance and a sense of humour.  In the end Biedermann even gives the arsonists the matches for their conflagration.  Paul Chahidi, a wonderful actor whom I have only seen before playing Shakespeare, often in female parts, is extremely funny as Schmitz, the coarser of the two fireraisers.  Benedict Cumberbatch, playing a rather stylish waiter, is his companion.  The play can be read as a powerful political allegory about the rise of nazism and communism but as a drama it has its weaknesses.  The story is entirely linear and the relationship between the characters is entirely one-sided.  Biedermann and his wife allow themselves to be hopelessly manipulated by the arsonists, but the play might have been more interesting and subtle if Frisch had chosen to show some kind of influence working in the other direction.  The arsonists themselves are entirely flat as characters and don't develop.   Obviously the play retains its relevance as we wonder whether tolerance or intolerance is the best way to deal with Islamic extremism.  I caught myself wondering how it might come across if the arsonists were played by actors of black or Asian origin.  The cringing excessive tolerance that Frisch denounced half a century ago was political and ideological;  today our dilemmas have more to do with race, post-colonial guilt and culture.  That doesn't mean the play has to be rewritten and adapted for the 21st century, but no doubt one day somebody will do so.