Heldenplatz by Thomas Bernhard – Arcola Theatre ****

The predominantly middle-aged, middle-class demographic of theatre-goers attending Heldenplatz at Hackney’s Arcola Theatre are unlikely to find anything in this play that they would deem controversial or challenging to the prevailing status quo. And it is a shame that, in watching this play at a remove of more than twenty years from its specific historical moment, what must have been an electric and destabilising drama when first performed is now somewhat dampened in effect. Indeed, Thomas Bernhard’s play was condemned in Austria and the playwright himself prohibited its performance there in his will. Exploring the right-wing anti-Semitic sentiments of those in power, Bernhard’s play shows how a post-war Austria has continued to treat an intellectual Jewish family, the Schuster’s, in such a way as to make Vienna just as uninhabitable in 1988 as it was when they fled it in 1938.

Bernhard structures his play with a succession of powerful and expressive monologues and it is the characters delivering these who manage to hold our attention. The minor personages fade into the background as if only there as a foil to those that do speak eloquently about their situation. Hannah Boyde, as the housemaid Herta, delivers the only strong performance from a minor character in this play. She speaks very infrequently but her nervous movements across the stage and her furious shoe-shining manage to convey her sense of entrapment and unease. She is cornered by Barbara Marten’s excellent Frau Zittel and made to listen to her erratic and often hysterical tale of life with the Professor whilst being admonished for her laziness and her naïve devotion to the family to which she does not belong. The performances lack polish with both Marten and Clive Mendus as Uncle Robert tripping over their words but no doubt they will become more self-assured as the run progresses.

The cast were battling against the tiredness of a flagging midweek audience who found it hard to keep their eyes open past 8pm in the warm and dimly lit studio. It was a real shame because the play and the triumphant performances given by the cast were far from soporific and deserved more attention. This is far from light entertainment but the play does manage to encompass humour along with its bleak misanthropy. And there is something very Chekhovian about this play; perhaps because this is the drama of a single family played out in the drawing room and the cemetery, or perhaps it is the desolation of the premise: suicide of Professor Schuster. Like Chekhov, Bernhard emphasises the importance of place; the Professor never felt at home in Vienna, Neuhaus or Oxford and his widow can’t stand the flat that looks over the Heldenplatz. After all the Heldenplatz is a major character in this play, characters continually stare out of the window at the looming square and, hearing again the phantom calls of Nazi troops from the square, Frau Professor collapses in defeat abandoning the hostile world in which she lives like her suicidal husband before her.

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