by dan pine
staff writer
With Hitler’s storm troopers running amok, inside the comfortable parlor of Herr Doktor Karl Vogel and his wife, Gretel, old-fashioned German values still hold sway.
But just how valuable are those values? That’s one of the questions posed by “The Good German,” a 2003 play by David Wiltse now playing at Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley.
Any of the play’s four characters could pass for the “Good German,” as each possesses admirable traits. But so do they claim less than admirable qualities, some of which may explain how Nazism could arise in so civilized a nation.
The story centers around Wilhelm Braun, an assimilated German Jew whose family has been killed in a fire set by Nazi thugs. His friend Gretel, a nurse, agrees to take him in, pending approval of her stuffy husband, Karl, a natural anti-Semite who had the good fortune to marry a kind soul like Gretel.
Karl reluctantly agrees, and Braun is put to work as a butler of sorts. Siemi, a family friend and low-level Nazi apparatchik, befriends Braun, but when Gretel abruptly loses her life trying to rescue other victims of Nazi tyranny, the Vogel household loses its conscience.
That sets the stage for a very talky Acts Two and Three. “The Good German” is ostensibly about Big Ideas, but ultimately proves intellectually limited.
The three remaining characters engage in colloquies on the nature of evil, anti-Semitism and hate. Tension mounts as Braun’s true identity gradually becomes clear to Siemi, who is drawn deeper into the Nazi death machine.
Karl knows all along he harbors a Jew, and given his open contempt of that “race,” his willingness to risk everything to protect Braun strains credulity. Braun, alternating between paralyzing fear and occasional outbursts of sneering bravado, bridles at his house arrest.
As Siemi and Karl offer up every tired rationale to justify their contempt of Jews, the playwright fails to put ironclad counterarguments in the mouth of Braun. Surely Wiltse abhors the Nazi creed; one wishes he had given his Jewish character greater eloquence to refute it.
What all three do share is chronic fear: fear of capture, fear of death, fear of fully comprehending the hell their nation has become.
All four actors give excellent, nuanced performances, especially Warren David Keith, who plays Karl with lofty indifference and coiled violence. Anne Darragh’s Gretel seems at first a caricature of pureheartedness, though we learn later she might not have been quite so angelic.
As Braun, Brian Herndon conveys his character’s devastation and muddled motives. Braun says he is a proud Jew, yet shows disdain for most things Jewish (“I am a German and I am Jewish,” he says, in that order). He also bears a secret love for Gretel and open contempt for Karl. It’s a lot of backstory Herndon carries well. If only Wiltse had made his Jewish “hero” a little less sniveling.
Darren Bridgett has the toughest job, as his Siemi slowly morphs from officious Nazi-come-lately to cold-hearted killer. Bridgett does a fine job, even brilliant at times, though Wiltse draws the character in overly broad strokes.
Wiltse also botches the play’s time frame. It would appear the action of the play occurs over a period of years (given the pre-Final Solution mentality at the beginning). Yet late in the play, as Allied forces close in on Berlin, Siemi mentions that Braun had been there for mere months. Not a ruinous mistake, but a sloppy one.
Credit Wiltse and director Kent Nicholson with filling the Vogel home –– so like a typically sedate Ibsen front parlor –– with a visceral sense of Nazi-era violence and hatred. At moments it had the audience breathless.
Ultimately, “The Good German” fails to give satisfactory answers to its own big questions about good and evil, but this handsomely mounted, well-acted production still makes for a thought-provoking night of theater.
“The Good German” plays 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays; 7 p.m. Sundays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through April 15 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. Tickets: $29-$47. Information: (415) 388-5208 or online at www.marintheatre.org.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California