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Sommer 14 - A Dance of Death

  • Theatre, Drama
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
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Time Out says

3 out of 5 stars

‘We will definitely be at war in September.’ So says Winston Churchill in March 1914 in controversial German playwright Rolf Hochhuth’s exceptionally detailed play about the origins of the First World War. Our wartime Prime Minister had it right, of course. But even hindsight doesn’t stop his prescient conviction being something of a shock.

‘Sommer 14 – A Dance of Death’ has a timely UK and English-language premiere at the Finborough theatre –100 years almost to the day since the conflict began. It dramatises the notoriously complicated build-up – the cataclysmic events and the strategising done by key political figures – which led to the death of about ten million military personnel.

Staged as a series of vignettes, the play often paints a devastating, if ultimately dry picture of what happened. The scenes are a mix of fiction and fact. Among much, we see Churchill revealing that he intends to use the RMS Lusitania as bait in order to get the USA into the war, and the plotting behind the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The scenes are all connected by the ghostly figure of Death, himself disgusted by the war’s loss of life: ‘I am no mass murderer! I have always taken people/One by one.’

In its own obsessive way, Hochhuth’s most recent script is fascinating. But ‘Sommer 14…’ is too wrapped up in its own historical theories and characters for its own good. It’s a meticulously researched piece. The playscript has pages and pages of notes, quotes and references that provide evidence for what happens in the scenes but aren’t featured in the performed version. It’s wholly engaging to read, but action on the stage lacks in both clarity of narrative and drama.

Christopher Loscher directs a strong cast with a particularly commanding turn from Dean Bray as Death, who gurns, smiles and sings his way through the piece. Some wise cuts to the long text have been made, but it doesn’t help much. As a piece of historical analysis, it’s well worth reading. As a play, it struggles.

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