Nazi business
Paul McGann stars in this entertaining German occupation drama
‘Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans,” Noël Coward once famously – satirically – crooned. The opening scene of
Gabriel, Moira Buffini’s too little known, now handsomely revived 1997 wartime drama, set in Occupied Guernsey in 1943 (the same year Coward’s controversial ditty was first aired), affords the spectacle of anti-German beastliness of a highly entertaining sort.
A widow called Jeanne Becquet (described as “elegant and aloof ” in the stage directions, brilliantly realised as such in Belinda Lang’s soignée performance) has invited into her enforced farmhouse lodging – her far nicer home having been requisitioned – a Nazi newcomer named Von Pfunz.
He barely speaks a word of English, or so Jeanne explains to her housekeeper, before gaily proceeding to insult him as she serves up a cognac. “Do tell me about your wonderful name, Major,” she drawls, with a smile. “It sounds like flatulence.” A moment later: “You’re a very handsome race. Some of you anyway. And some of you look like goblins!” At which the interloper, played by Paul McGann (resembling a sinister headmaster with creepy round specs, severe short back and sides and killer cheekbones), giggles and grins, receiving the insult with a “Nice, thank you”.
Of course, it takes no great intuition to realise Von Pfunz’s kindergarten way with ze English language might be a ruse. Sure enough, the tables are swiftly turned: Jeanne’s reptilian guest has merely adopted a chameleon ignorance the better to get the lie of the land. There’s enough incriminating evidence – he’s wise to her black-marketeering – to have her hauled off. But in a further twist that dares us to condemn it as an improbable fiction, he relishes her risk-taking rudeness, infatuated by someone who dares to stand up to him.
This is a fascinating chapter of history. What with Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle and the BBC’s SS-GB, television is busy plundering epic fictional ‘what-ifs?’ had the war gone Hitler’s way. But the fate of the Channel Islanders – effectively abandoned by the UK and treated, initially, with relative restraint by the barely resisted Germans – lies within the realm of grim fact. The televisual possibilities are plain, but what’s impressive about Gabriel is its theatrical compactness and thematic complexity: it has a thriller-like plot but also flirts with uneasy mirth, earthy romance and otherworldly inklings; into this life-and-death situation creep intimations of the supernatural.
There’s a mystery man in the fraught midst of things: a dashing youth washed up naked on a nearby shore, who initially slumbers then awakes, not knowing who he is, but somehow fluent in German and English. He’s resented as a liability by Jeanne (who’s missing her too-adored RAF son), is fussed over by Jeanne’s 10-yearold daughter, who believes she has summoned him as a celestial saviour (hence “Gabriel”, his given name) and is tended to, in a more ardent, swiftly carnal way, by Jeanne’s (covertly Jewish) daughter-in-law, Lily.
Is there a hint of hokum mingling with the scent of sea-spray? Yes: a lot happens, and melodramatically quickly, in the second half. Yet the play captures the strange unreality of the ordeal well – and Kate McGregor’s production rises to the occasion, albeit hindered by an overly elevated design. Guernsey was somewhat cocooned from the worst horrors, although the grisly treatment of prisoners of war on the island is alluded to. In this Anglo-Teutonic no man’s land, there’s some scope for ambiguity and Lang is superb as the resistance-fighter whose weapon is her wit, her hatred cloaked beneath insouciant disdain like some undercover agent.
While having to cede his erstwhile heart-throb status to fine, upstanding newcomer Robin Morrissey as Gabriel, McGann is fantastic, too, as a civilised monster who has been inspired to write poetry about the concentration camps and who takes his amorous prey’s rebuffs on the chin in the pathetic-perturbing knowledge that he holds all the cards and commands all the guards.
At Liverpool Playhouse (0151 709 4776), Tues-Sat. Touring until May. Details: gabrieltheplay.co.uk