When Nicola seizes the opportunity call out Israel for its ongoing persecution of Palestinians, it is momentarily uncomfortably topical, especially as Judith challenges the antisemitism underlying her attitude. We believe we’re about to be on a knife edge, but the writer doesn’t know what to do with either side of the debate and it soon feels like a discarded thread, one of many in the play.
As a concept, it is an intriguing and unsettling undertaking. Played in the original German, and in a modern Germany working hard to renew itself in light of its past despite the current creeping rise of a new nationalism and fascism, I imagine these questions of Holocaust legacy and antisemitism are potent.
Perhaps in the hands of a British translator able to deliver a version with more nuanced contemporary satire, or with more of a sense of the current political circumstances in the Middle East and antisemitism in the UK, it could be made to feel sharply urgent here, on a London stage. But instead it feels like a missed opportunity: dated and, for all its philosophical dives into darkness and clever lighting, ultimately unilluminating.
By Judi Herman
Photos by Ellie Kurttz
Nachtland runs until Saturday 20 April. 7.30pm, 2.30pm (Wed & Sat only). From £24. Young Vic Theatre, London, SE1 8LZ. youngvic.org
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