The Long Shadow of Alois Brunner review – tense mystery of a missing writer and a Nazi fugitive

The formation of Nazis including Adolf Eichmann to hideouts successful Latin America aft nan 2nd world warfare is good documented. Mudar Alhaggi’s play tells of 1 SS serviceman who flew eastbound instead, but comes astatine his life communicative obliquely.

We perceive really Alois Brunner, known arsenic Eichmann’s right-hand man, settled successful Damascus and apparently became a information advisor to nan president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad. He is drawn arsenic thing of a state-sponsored fugitive who, ideologically, brought a portion of nan Third Reich pinch him arsenic he helped to create Syria’s intelligence system, pinch its modern-day torture methods.

Performers Mohammad Alrashi and Wael Kadour, some exiled Syrians, narrate his life but besides nan difficulties astir dramatising it. Produced by Collective Ma’louba, this is ostensibly a play successful hunt of a play. We are told that its writer, Alhaggi, has now gone missing and nan scraps of his book are what nan actors portion together earlier us.

It is beguilingly naive – nan actors show america they will speak and move slowly, nan surtitles translating their Arabic into English ne'er leaving america behind. It is simply staged, too, pinch a array and chairs rearranged to fresh scenes successful Syria and Germany. But location is trade successful Omar Elerian’s direction, which builds intrigue while keeping an aerial of improvisation.

The 2 actors play retired flashes of Brunner’s life – arsenic a gruff fig successful hospital, aliases an irascible aged man railing against Lenin and populist successful a video rental shop – but they weave this pinch nan communicative of their vanished writer. Why has he disappeared? Is nan shade of Brunner stalking him? At times, it verges connected postmodern noir.

Uncertainty sits astatine nan halfway of a tense show successful which you are not ever judge who is speaking. Questions astir some men’s lives bent successful nan air, holding their mysteries arsenic Alhaggi attempts to gets person to Brunner.

Their biographical specifications are mixed and sometimes nan writer seems to morph into nan Nazi. This parallel is confounding astatine first, but slow we spot really nan terrorised are forced, always, to spot themselves successful narration to their oppressor, though present it besides leads to a vague metaphor for nan exiled writer’s process. “What remains of theatre erstwhile you do not person a connection and deficiency an audience?” asks 1 actor.