Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga has created a tricksy play in Way To Heaven, which juggles with ideas of perception but at times seems a bit too pleased with its own postmodernism.
Enacted mainly as a promenade piece, its (unacknowledged) basis is the true story of the Nazis' Theresienstadt camp, which, to dupe a visiting Red Cross commission, was disguised as a 'model ghetto'.
Jeff Rawle, playing a Red Cross representative, looks back with bafflement at how he was misled. The pre-rehearsed scenes he witnessed are re-enacted over and over, unravelling more each time as the participants stumble over their script and, in one case, abandon the charade altogether to contemplate escape.
The camp commandant (speaking as though we were his visitors) celebrates the Nazi version of a united Europe - these are just its birth pangs, he claims.
Then the action switches to a raised stage and the macabre scenes of how it was all planned, with the commandant (Dominic Rowan) throwing tantrums when people get their lines wrong while Gershom Gottfried (a suitably exhausted-looking Richard Katz), forced to play 'mayor', looks on in despair.
This is not comfortable theatre: even when there are intentionally funny moments you feel distressed as soon as you've laughed. It's also quite confusing if you don't immediately cotton on to the story behind it.
The horror of the situation is captured alarmingly well by the cast, although director Ramin Gray doesn't keep a firm enough grip on the tension of the piece. But recalling this event reminds us we still fall for such duplicities.
Until Jul 9, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, Sloane Square SW1, Mon to Sat 7.45pm, Sat mats 4pm, Jun 29 mat 2.30pm, £7.50 to £15. Tel: 020 7565 5000. Tube: Sloane Square
Way To Heaven
