Dame Maggie shines in a dark study of Nazism
A German Life Bridge Theatre, London ★★★★★
Acompelling history lesson. An acting masterclass like no other. Dame Maggie Smith is back on the London stage for the first time in 12 years and – aged 84 – commands attention for more than 90 minutes without interruption by virtue of her undiminished expressive powers and the unflagging importance of the tale she has to relay – that of one of Goebbels’ secretaries, Brunhilde Pomsel (1911-2017), an ordinary woman who got a close-up view of the Nazis and yet had a strange and saving myopia when it came to grasping the full monstrosity of the regime.
Last time around – in 2007 – Smith was the pivotal, enigmatic, titular figure in Edward Albee’s The Lady
From Dubuque in the West End. This time she has landed director Nicholas Hytner with a coup for his new Bridge theatre. A monologue is a rarity for her, if you discount her appearance as a desperate, alcoholic vicar’s wife in Bennett’s Talking Heads series on TV.
In fact, with its attention to telling detail, and wry, subtle psychological revelation, there’s something of Bennett’s style in fellow playwright Christopher Hampton’s text, derived from a memoir and related documentary interview Pomsel gave when she was 103. And if the evening carries a frisson of provocation and topical perturbation, it’s that Smith’s undisguised Englishness brings the story of encroaching collusion home. A principal reason why the public took to Smith very swiftly from the start of her career – in the mid-fifties – was her rare gift for comedy. There is
laughter in the first half-hour, as this grey-haired figure reminisces, as if this were an extended anecdote. “Let’s see how it goes,” she says, with a conspiratorial twinkle of apprehension, as she launches into Pomsel’s earliest recollections – her faltering way with words initially part of her down to earth charm.
Her offhand evocation of the Nazis – and, with Smith, the hands are used in a sort of intricate semaphore – paints them in harmless colours. “It turned out to be a crowd of men with BO,” she says with a sniff, recalling being dragged along by a boyfriend to a party meeting in the early Thirties. Her eyes seal in remembered bliss as she recalls the order and hope Hitler appeared to bring. Little by little – as she gets drawn into well-paid work at Goebbels’ propaganda ministry – she registers the shifts, the people who disappear, the Jewish friends pushed out and away – director Jonathan Kent’s canny approach slowly stranding her, casting everything around her in a pitiless gloom.
It’s a performance of ripe ambiguity, not a phrase misjudged, every movement contributing – the way she fiddles, sheepishly, with her necklace, or clamps her hands round her face in an anguished echo of Munch. When she relives her revulsion at Goebbels’ notorious “total war” rally at Berlin Sportpalast in 1943, we’re on her side; when she folds her arms and issues a defiant defence that it was hard to know the truth, impossible to resist, it’s not so clear. Smith’s claim to widespread fame rests on myriad films, the Harry Potter franchise, Downton Abbey. But it’s nights like this that explain why she’s one of the greats. If this is her stage swansong, what a profound, dignified, thoughtprovoking final curtain.