Faith, Hope and Charity

‘Catch 22’ in the Weimar Republic: fined 150 Marks for selling corsets without a permit, Elizabeth can’t repay her debt without breaking the law. Social criticism and flamboyant surrealism score this beautifully crafted vignette from Hungarian émigré Odön von Horváth.

It was banned in Berlin in 1932, and Christopher Hampton’s lyrical 1989 translation retains its whiff of rebellion. Director Leonie Kubigsteltig’s production is an impeccably stylish marriage of period detail with biting contemporaneity, filling in with sleek physical sequences what Horváth leaves unsaid. And the whole is expertly underscored by Tom Gibbons’s pulsating, urban sound-design.

When the cast hit the wall-eyed heights of surrealism, as in Helena Lymbery’s ludicrously punitive boss, this night soars. Often, they fall slightly short, blunting both the script’s comic potential and its tragic edge, and the cast doubling is badly judged. But the energy and great panache of Kubigsteltig’s gusty production pull us deep inside Horváth’s discomforting hall of mirrors.