Showing now at the Ensemble Theatre Kirribilli -a must see play.
by Jeffrey Hatcher
Artistic Director Nicole Buffoni
Cast: Danny Adcock, Sharon Millerchip
Reviewed by Susanne Gervay www.sgervay.com
Emotionally and intellectually gripping, The Ensemble Theatre’s production of Jeffry Hatcher’s ‘A Picasso’ opens in an underground bunker in Paris October 24, 1941. The sound of Nazi jackboots set the scene for a potent, thought provoking confrontation between Pablo Picasso and Miss Fischer from the German Cultural Ministry on the power of art, war and ideas.
Pablo Picasso has been brought in for interrogation. The young female Nazi official Miss Fischer enters the colourless bunker, in her harshly cut suit and German-like precision. Pablo Picasso is flamboyant, opinionated, a huge fluid presence like his art. She must obtain an authentic Picasso for the Nazi exhibition of ‘degenerate art’.
‘From now on we are going to wage a merciless war of destruction against the last remaining element of cultural disintegration.’ Adolf Hitler, 18 July 1937
Picasso’s life and the political events of the time are brilliantly interspersed with witty, quick dialogue in the interrogation. In a roller coaster of ideas and conscience, values and humanity, ‘A Picasso’ reaches into the role of art in politics. Picasso fights for his art, claims it is not political, he is not political. The question of politics and art culminate in Miss Fischer’s challenge to Picasso that he hid in France under the protection of art, while his country Spain burned, as the Spanish Civil War tore it apart. She breaks down Picasso’s certainty, as he screams, but there is Guernica.
On 26 April 1937, the German Condor Legion, in a bloodbath of bombing destroyed the quiet village of Guernica in support of the Spanish Civil War and to test their blitzkrieg. Picasso’s Cubist masterpiece Guernica, is one of the world’s greatest anti-war paintings. It is political.
Art is ideas and the Nazis needed to destroy ideas. Miss Fischer’s role was to gain a Picasso painting, to destroy it. Picasso’s role was to fight for art’s survival. They both change, breakdown, as power moves between them.
Picasso runs 90 minutes with no intermission as ideas, clash and change, and tension escalate in this play about war and art and conscience. Powerfully performed by Danny Adcock who plays Picasso and Sharon Millerchip who plays Miss Fischer, ‘A Picasso’ is a play that needs to be seen more than once.
Ensemble Theatre, Sydney www.ensemble.com.au showing NOW!
Another brilliant play dealing with the impact of Nazism is Hitler’s Daughter by Jackie french at Darling Quarter Theatre Darling harbour
www.monkeybaa.com.au
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