Tag Archives: Thomson Hall

THE PINK LIST

★★★★

King’s Head Theatre

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THE PINK LIST at the King’s Head Theatre

★★★★

“Michael Trauffer packs an enormous amount into this engaging and perfectly performed show”

The Pink List, from the creators of ‘Fabulett 1933’, explores the treatment of gay men by the German state through the eyes of Karl Hellwig (Micahel Trauffer), a fictional character drawn from compilation of the life experiences of many concentration camp survivors including Karl Gorath, Heinz Dörmer and Josef Kohout. Only a very few courageous and resilient gay victims of the National Socialist regime publicly spoke about their experiences after the war, due to the continued criminality of homosexuality. This play with music, uses their testimony and first-hand accounts to portray events, including incidents in the camps, verdicts of criminal trials for ‘immoral actions’ between consenting adult men and their exclusion from the schemes for compensation of victims of the Nazis.

The pink lists created by the Nazis to allow them to track and target gay men for shipping to the camps, continued to be used to identify and prosecute men in both East & West Germany after the war. It is the context of such a trial, that of Karl, that structures this short piece. Set in 1957 and with the recorded words of the judge (Richard Simon Fridrich), prosecutor and arresting officer triggering Karl’s memories. We see Trauffer using cleverly simple, but effective, changes of costume and minimal props to enact with passion and sparks of humour, Karl’s early crush on a fellow Scout and his finding of ‘his people’ in the cabaret clubs of early 1930s Berlin. The subject of one of the two songs that received a deserved round of applause, ‘Home’. A visceral re-enactment of his punishing existence in the two camps in which Karl is imprisoned is delivered with conviction and appropriate emotion. The chilling image of a Christmas under guard contrasting starkly with that of the family Christmas of his childhood crush.

The second ballad to receive applause was the heartrending ‘Nothing’s Ever Really Over’. It describes Karl’s post-liberation search for his past family & friends ‘walking over the debris of a nightmare’ with the ‘shadows of the SS Guards right here’.

Whilst necessary to give a dramatic context the play, perhaps, dwells too much on the pre-war and wartime story that is well known from other dramas, films and novels. The more interesting and in a sense, more compelling part of the narrative; Karl’s arrest, trial and imprisonment under the infamous Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, which was not ‘de-nazified’ as other parts of the law were after 1945, the sentence which would not acknowledge the years spent in concentration camps as off-setting time to be served for the 1957 conviction and his search for recognition and recompense for his persecution and victimhood seemed not to be given due time and space through re-enactment. The failure of the state to acknowledge that, and even to continue to use the Nazis’ pink lists to maintain persecution of the victims by imprisonment is a story that needs to be told and awareness of it raised. This extended monologue with songs, delivered with emotion and flashes of humour by its author is a good start in doing that.

The final song, ‘I’m Still Here’, a rousing anthem for all of those, like Karl, who were overlooked and whose persecution was continued by the German state, gives further testimony of the struggles which continue for LGBTQ+ recognition in some parts of the world. The German government only apologised for the persecution of gay men under the Nazi regime and in post war years in 2002, annulled the post war convictions under Paragraph 175 in 2017 and in 2022 announced plans for compensation for gay victims.

The Pink List may only be an hour, but Michael Trauffer packs an enormous amount into this engaging and perfectly performed show.

 


THE PINK LIST at the King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed on 5th August 2024

by Thomson Hall

Photography by Sarah Morrison

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ENG-ER-LAND | ★★★ | July 2024
DIVA: LIVE FROM HELL! | ★★★★ | June 2024
BEATS | ★★★ | April 2024
BREEDING | ★★★★ | March 2024
TURNING THE SCREW | ★★★★ | February 2024
EXHIBITIONISTS | ★★ | January 2024
DIARY OF A GAY DISASTER | ★★★★ | July 2023
THE BLACK CAT | ★★★★★ | March 2023
THE MANNY | ★★★ | January 2023
FAME WHORE | ★★★ | October 2022

THE PINK LIST

THE PINK LIST

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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

★★★★

Reading Abbey Ruins

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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST at  Reading Abbey Ruins

★★★★

“a wonderful adaptation of the Wilde Classic in a uniquely atmospheric setting”

The wit of the famed Irish playwright sparkled in the evening sun in this outdoor production by Progress Theatre. In the shadow of the gaol in which he was incarcerated for ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ well known Wildean epigrams bounce off the walls of the former Reading Abbey’s chapter house. We all know and relish Lady Bracknell’s (Caroline Warner) pronouncement on the ‘carelessness of the loss of two parents’, her astonishment at the receptacle in which the infant Jack Worthing (Chris Westgate) was found or the ‘immateriality of the line’ on which he was found and her daughter Gwendolen Fairfax’s (Stephanie Ness) declaration of the ‘sensational reading to be found in one’s own diary providing entertainment on a train journey’. However, the cast and director (Steph Dewar) highlighted many others including ‘The truth is rarely plain and never simple’, ‘All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his’ and ‘The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.’ 

The simplistic but effective setting covering the three acts in the town house of Algernon Moncrieff and Jack’s Hertfordshire estate works well within the historic setting; despite my initial misgivings that this ‘drawing-room comedy’ might be lost in the expanse of the outdoor venue. Costumes (Wendy Hobson and Chris Moran) and the required minimum of furniture and props provide the period elegance to anchor the production in its mid-1890s setting. The skilful interval split, mid Act II, works well to keep the pace racing along towards the conclusion.

Hindered in his attempts to keep his two worlds from colliding by the intervention of his friend Algernon, played with bubbling mischievousness by Matthew Urwin, Jack finally resorts to ‘killing off’ his fictional miscreant brother Earnest, who by continually misbehaving ‘in town’, provides Jack the perfect excuse whenever he needs to escape from the country. Algernon, who also has a fictional reason for leaving town to visit the country, in turn becomes enamoured with Jack’s young ward, Cecily Cardew (Nancy Gittus). Prepared to sacrifice their double lives for the love of Gwendolen and Cecily both men stride haphazardly forward to discover the importance of being ‘Earnest’.

Between the two young women a bond of ‘sisterhood’ is quickly reached and equally quickly ripped asunder on their first meeting. Only to be restored on finding themselves both to have been misled by their suitors. The speedy change is achieved with excellent precision and hilarity from Ness and Gittus. Ness is easily recognisable as the daughter of Warner’s Lady Bracknell both in mannerisms and speech. She deftly uses the dialogue to create a believable character of a young woman of society used to getting her own way. Whilst Warner’s approach to the notorious ‘handbag’ line of Lady Bracknell is to expertly underplay it with effective emphasis of shock and outrage at the presumption of Jack expecting her daughter to ‘marry into a cloakroom and forge an alliance with a parcel’.

In juxtaposition to the slightly smug and sarcastic Moncrieff and increasingly vexed and frustrated Worthing, the Rector of the Hertfordshire estate, Dr. Chasuble (Paul Gittus) and Cecily’s tutor, Miss Prism (Liz Paulo), provide a simmering, sublimated sexual tension to great comic effect. They, along with Algernon’s manservant, Lane (Dean Stephenson) and Jack’s butler, Merriman (John Goodman) who both portray with few words and a good many telling facial expressions the knowing yet rather put upon non-leisured-class, provide excellent comedic cameos in counterpoint to their erring employers.

Progress Theatre have produced a wonderful adaptation of the Wilde Classic in a uniquely atmospheric setting.


THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST at Reading Abbey Ruins

Reviewed on 19th July 2024

by Thomson Hall

Photography by Aidan Moran

 

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HENRY I | ★★★★★ | June 2023

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

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