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Camp Siegfried was a real place: to all intents and purposes it was a Nazi summer camp that ran on Long Island in the ’30s, indoctrinating young German-Americans in the wholesome family values of the Third Reich.
It was a different time: America was going through one of its isolationist phases, fascism had not yet been discredited as an ideology, and it didn’t seem unnatural in a country built on immigration to allow Germans to get up to German stuff.
However, US playwright Bess Wohl’s ‘Camp Siegfried’ is more subtle than just a historical drama about a place that now, of course, seems like a lurid historical anomaly.
It follows two unnamed German-American teens, played by Patsy Ferran and Luke Thallon, who spend a summer, both magical and painful, together. In many ways, Wohl’s drama isn’t about fascism at all, but about two confused teenagers and the tentative ebb and flow of their relationship. It’s based on a fairly familiar dynamic: she’s the shy dork, he’s the rugged jock. You wouldn’t put them together… but they hit it off. And yet: does he really like her? Or does he just want to get laid, thinking the combination of her loneliness and confession to a previous fling with a married man means she’ll be an easy target? What does she really want from him? Is it really a meeting of minds or is he just an emotional crutch to be discarded as her stature in the camp community grows?
The truth is, neither of them really know what they want, or at least, their feelings constantly lurch and see-saw between extremes over a summer that would be emotionally trying for them even without the addition of Nazi indoctrination. It is, of course, utterly chilling when Ferran’s character is rewarded for her hard work by being invited to address the camp, duly giving a thunderous speech extolling Hitler’s peaceful virtues and denouncing the Jews. But the ideology underpinning the camp is less significant because it’s what the two of them passionately believe – she says these things because she knows they’re what she’ll get applause for saying – than because the camp enables their worst instincts: violence, vengeance, contempt for the weak, and even ill-advised unprotected sex.
Wohl’s sensitively wrought play is not an apology for fascism, saying all Nazis are just mixed-up kids. But it is a drama about radicalisation, about two lonely teenagers who don’t know how they feel about the world, being exposed to a monolithically certain belief system.
Though both actors are considerably north of their teenage years (Ferran is 31, though, admittedly, she does still look about 12), they’re both superb at conveying the embarrassment, fear and callousness of teenhood. Ferran is one of the very best actors out there, and she’s on fine form here: her hangdog character looks suddenly electrified while she’s making the speech, the approval of her peers jolting through her like a million volts as she mouths off Nazi formulae. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t really seem to believe any of it yet. The drug of approval is enough to set her down a dark path – although that becomes derailed thanks to unexpected events on an unscheduled trip to New York City.
Thallon’s performance is bigger and broader: his character is simpler than hers, with an endearingly naive habit of constantly calling her a ‘dummy’. But he has a beautiful moment where he quietly reflects on how he thought he’d killed a fellow camper during a wrestling match, and how for the 45 minutes he thought the other pupil was dead he felt different, indelibly a killer. His relief at the injured pupil’s recovery is heartening… but again, his story doesn’t quite take the path it seems to be set on.
The parallels to contemporary America feel inevitable, but not really on-the-nose. I suspect it might have landed a little differently if Trump were still in the White House, but as it is, it feels more a universal drama about teenagers and radicalisation: you could probably draw a line to Shamima Begum as easily as the January 6 mob.
Katy Rudd’s production keeps things fairly simple, with the stage virtually bare apart from a backdrop of blank vertical bars. Ferran and Thallon’s movements are carefully choreographed by Rachel-Leah Hosker, from awkward distance to stylised passion, and Rosanna Vize’s set’s cavernous emptiness is occasionally enlivened by disturbing footage of Nazi rallies or impressionistic projections of sea mist. But it’s certainly not the most overly theatrical of shows: truth be told, it wouldn’t lose a lot if was a radio play. Possibly the vast Old Vic isn’t the obvious venue for it. But that’s fine, because I’m sure ‘Camp Siegfried’ will receive plenty more productions in years to come: sensitive dramas about teenagers and poignant tragedies about radicalisation are not the sort of things that seem liable to date, and Wohl’s play is a fine example of both.