On Mephisto and the urgency to keep theatre alive

Mephisto poster. Image: Supplied

By Keith Bain

30 Aug 2021

In a production of a grim play set against the backdrop of the Nazis’ rise to power, these students inadvertently made a bold case for the urgent need to keep theatre alive.

Mephisto, Ariane Mnouchkine’s adaptation of Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel, is set in Germany during the political rise of the Nazi party. Which means, it’s hardly a spoiler to say that by the end of it, things are terribly bleak. You’d have walked out of the Theatre on the Bay in time to make it home before curfew, feeling winded by the grim future presaged by the final scenes. If you’d been hoping to escape the bad news of our present-day reality, you would not have found it here.

The student actors didn’t even take a bow.

And so there were no whoops or cheers, just applause as the permitted audience of 50 people collectively exhaled. Because those final moments — emotionally devastating to say the least — brought on a shared cessation of breath. And then a lingering stillness that echoed the play’s mournful tone.

Mann’s novel centres on Hendrik Höfgen, a member of a Bolshevik theatre group in 1920s Hamburg who switches allegiances and then soars to success after ingratiating himself to the Nazis. The title references the pinnacle of Höfgen’s newfound prosperity — playing Mephistopheles in Wagner’s Faust. Mnouchkine’s adaptation, first produced in 1979, takes a Brechtian approach and adds Mann himself as a character.

Mephisto - left to right are Michiel Bester, Tumelo Mogashoa, Renee Malherbe. Image: LAMTA/ Supplied

While the rapid rise-to-power of the Nazis happens largely in the background, the tide of hateful politics that washes across Germany is witnessed via the unravelling of Höfgen’s theatre company. Friendships are severed, lovers torn apart, personal values disintegrate. Having sold out to the Nazis, Höfgen becomes their own morally bankrupt puppet. He has sold his soul to the devil.

The play’s many scenes give the students ample opportunities to sink their teeth into weighty dialogue, and to give vent to a range of emotions — love and outrage, disgust and desperation, hopelessness and despair are all given an out. And since much of the action happens in a theatre, there are plays-within-plays that add another dimension to the drama. These are moments of reprieve from the gloom, scenes during which we’re granted permission to laugh as perverse political parody, broad comedy sketches, drunken exchanges and fits of eroticism are served up to lighten the mood.

They are, of course, a dark mirroring of the horrors unfolding across Germany.

It is by no means solely a history lesson, though. Mephisto resounds with worrying contemporary parallels evident in resurgent nationalisms and new waves of totalitarian-branded leaders fostering a climate of hatred and social discord all across the globe.

And, of course, as the Hamburg theatre company disintegrates under the Nazis, there are mournful allusions to our own theatre industry being crippled as the pandemic’s impact rages on while the government turns a blind eye.

Dealing with all of these dark themes was a large cast of young actors of considerable talent and virtuosity. In the face of the current difficulties of mounting a live show and despite all the harrowing reports of live entertainment everywhere being torn asunder, replaced by digital screens and streaming content, the energy poured out of them. They were on fire — alive, committed, determined to give it their best shot.

Mephisto - from left to right are Jackie Lulu, Tjaart van der Walt, Ché-jean Jupp. Image: LAMTA/ Supplied

What was evident, too, was the deft hand of veteran director Chris Weare. He must have worked them hard, pushed them, and given them substantial tools to enable them to shine as they grappled with the complex emotions of conflicted, compromised adults caught up in a terrifying reality.

Their resilience in the face of the current crisis is reassuring. There is nothing quite like watching a student production because each performance is a young person trying harder than they’ve ever tried before, putting their all — heart, body, guts and soul — into doing something they love. They are putting themselves on the line in hopes that they will get to spend the rest of their lives performing in front of an audience.

To watch them on stage is to witness hope in action, to bask for a while in their dreams of a bright future. Seeing them perform lifts you up — no matter how haunted the production, how tragic the tale, how cruel the theme, nor how devastating the play’s final scenes.

Mephisto poster. Image: Supplied

Amid all Mephisto’s passionate performances and heart-wrenching moments, one, in particular, sent a jolt up my spine. It involved two actors — their characters on the verge of violence — barking angrily at one another, the tips of their respective noses just millimetres apart. It was a fiery, furious exchange of words — and no doubt also an exchange of spittle, sweat and god knows what else. Electric sparks, perhaps?

There is a commitment, energy, a realness in such moments that an audience simply does not experience with any other medium. Not in the same electrifying manner. In that instant, those young actors hooked us into an ancient ritual — the communion of live theatre.

Not virtual, not digital, not streamed. Live. DM/ ML

Featuring 29 students of LAMTA (the Luitingh Alexander Musical Theatre Academy), Mephisto was directed by Christopher Weare and is performed at Theatre on the Bay until 2 September.

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