What the hell was Nachtland? A Performance Analysis

Content Warning: Talks of the Holocaust

Seamus Heaney once stated that there is ‘no such thing as innocent bystanding’ [Heaney, Line 1] and this runs prevalent in Marius von Mayenburg’s Nachtland (2022). This German play follows six characters as a pair of siblings find a painting in the attic of their recently deceased father that is thought to be an original done by Adolf Hitler himself. We see siblings Phillip and Nicola and their partners, Judith and Fabian respectively. Judith is a Jewish woman and strongly insists that the painting be destroyed straight away. Initially, she is backed up by her husband until Fabian, Nicola’s husband, starts talking about selling it. This is when we are introduced to Evemaria, an art consultant, who specialises in Hitler’s work as Hitler was her ‘father’s hobby-horse’ [P.26] and then the eccentric Kahl, an art buyer for an anonymous art collector. In this analysis, I will delve into Brechtian influences, questions surrounding the performance, and the dynamic of the characters and how they are constructed and displayed.

The nature of the performance is a dark, overbearing one. Diving deep into Germany’s Nazi past and the deep-rooted antisemitism that still exists today. Looking at the aims of the play we can start a conversation surrounding separating the art from the artist and how far we can take it. This aim was fully met as there is a whole scene where Judith asks Kahl directly if he would be offering the amount of money he is for the painting if it was done by another artist to which Kahl refuses.

Another aim of the play, I believe, was to expose the deep-rooted antisemitism that remains lingering in Germany. Through Evemaria, Kahl and even Nicola we can see this aim met. Nicola constantly disregards Judith, talks back defensively to her and brings up Palestine to her face. Evemaria and Kahl however, are more obvious, which makes sense as these two characters are closer to the Nazi dictator. Kahl offers more money when buying the painting if Judith goes out to dinner with him just because she is ethnically Jewish, whereas Evemaria never fully engages with Judith. I like to think that this play shows that Germany’s past is never fully buried. There are still people that want to buy Hitler’s art, that have family rings from the Nazi reign and talk freely about family members who fraternised with them.

After watching this performance, you can’t help but question the human morality within the play. Once money and wealth are mentioned, the siblings proudly display their family’s connection to Nazi higherups in order to bump up the price of the sale. Nicola blatantly ignores the concerns of Judith when it comes to the history surrounding the painting. Then she doesn’t go to the hospital with her deeply ill husband because of the sale taking place that day. It’s a question of how far you are willing to go to sacrifice your own morals, if you even had any to begin with.

The performance starts with a cluttered stage. Full of old furniture, toys, clothes and appliances to signal an abandoned attic space. We are introduced to four of the characters as they start to clear the stage of these objects silently before the play starts. This is the first insight we get to the characters. We can get a sense of who’s who through the way they react to the objects being cleared. One woman disregards the items and clears them quickly, while the other is being more careful to with the items, looking through each toy in a discarded to box or looking through a chest of clothes. Once everything is cleared from the stage an old and faded rug is revealed and unity, all four actors on stage roll up the rug and take it backstage. This shows the unity between characters at the start of the play, a sort of foreshadowing.

Immediately after the rug has been taken off stage, the lights dim, and the actors return to a now empty, crumbling and derelict stage. The stage stretches out into the audience, allowing an almost immersive experience. At the top the stage, furthest away from the audience there is vivid carpeting but as the stage stretches out, the further away from the back of the stage we get the more the flooring is revealed. Old newspaper under the carpeting is revealed and then at the very end of the stage it is black, rotten and crumbling. This not only shows the audience the state of the house but can also show the powerplay between characters, if they stood at the rotting end of the stage, they were powerless. A large imposing outline of a house looms over the stage and it stays there for the entirety of the performance. Each room lights up when a character speaks showing their foundation in the house.

Looking at their costumes at the beginning of the play each set of partners wear cohesive costumes with one another. Phillip and Judith start in navy blue. Judith in a jumpsuit and Phillip in shirt over a t-shirt with the t-shirt repeating “faust” going top to bottom with the lettering going from green to red. This a specific choice of costume of Phillip as Faust is a German legend about a alchemist who sells himself to the devil for more power but in order to obtain this, he is to serve the devil for eternity. I see this as a direct correlation to the arc of Phillip in this performance. He becomes so infatuated with the painting that he loses everything. Additionally, the red and green lettering on his shirt can relate to his sister’s, Nicola, and her partner’s clothing colour. I believe this is a foreshadowing for the attraction between the siblings later in the show.

Nicola and Fabian’s costumes at the beginning of the play are a matching red and green colour. Fabian dons a red adidas jacket, signifying uniformity which can eventually link to his stage exit when he salutes and marches off stage, still in said jacket. The red on both their costumes were striking under the lights, bring the attention more to them than the partners in a more calming navy blue.

However, when it comes to the day of the sale, there is a costume change. On stage, Phillip strips down from his old costume and puts on a dark suit to match his sister’s dark shirt and long skirt. He does this front of Judith, signifying him breaking off from her though his costume to be with his sister instead. Once he is changed, they stand side by side. Their dark costumes look like funeral attire, like they’re mourning the loss of the painting. Judith matches the tone with her clothing, but she mourns something else, her husband. Her integrity.

When watching this performance, you can see several Brechtian techniques shine through. There are multiple addresses to the audience. The entire play starts with the fourth wall being broken with the address to the audience. Throughout the play, there are multiple soliloquies where it is just the actor and audience together. Take Fabian, for example. When he is slowly being infected by tetanus from cutting himself on the painting, he monologues to the audience while having erratic movements. Using this technique for Fabian was unnerving to watch as it showed his solitude not only when dealing with the cut on this thumb but throughout the whole play.

Brecht also liked to use song and dance in his works. Once it is decided that the sale of the painting will go through, Judith sings a song completely acapella. The effect of this was to show just how much pain she is in by having this sale go through. Her powerful voice is striking to the audience, and it rendered the theatre silent. This part of the play can be linked to the indirect trauma we see in the Sylvia Plath poem, Daddy (1965). In the poem the voice compares her father to an oppressor and even years after his death she is still living with the trauma. This is the same as Judith, within the song she sings you can feel the generational trauma at hand as she watches her husband profit from her own oppressor. Plath often used a Jewish woman’s voice in poems as a metaphor for her own identity in oppression.

Speaking of Brecht. There are links to his own Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (1938). From this collection of playlets, we can see what life was like for Jewish people during the Nazi reign. It’s told from the perspective of “ordinary people”. The first obvious link is the similar stories between Judith here and Judith from ‘The Jewish Wife’. Both must leave their husbands because of their race and ethnicity. The past mirrors modern day despite the end of Hitler’s regime, again links to generational trauma. Through Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich this performance becomes much more powerful, even more so when the siblings start proudly talking about their family’s affiliation with the Nazis.

There is another scene where music and dance are displayed, but in a more absurd way. When Kahl is first introduced, he comes out on stage where techno music is blaring with only black tight shorts, that exposed his backside, as he dances. After a few moments, Evemaria also joins in with this dance. This displays their closeness one and another, that this sale is just another routine that they’ve done several times before. There is also a hint expressionism here as well. Brecht would often incorporate dance and music but the colourful flashing lights and the seemingly randomness of the dance number is very expressionist. Another expressionist feature would be when Fabian is slowly being taken over by Hitler’s ghost. The flashing lights and the overbearing music whilst he monologues with his erratic movements, this makes for an uncomfortable watch. It shows how bad his suffering is and how no one seems to care.

By introducing Kahl this way leaves an unseriousness surrounding him, despite him being a very serious character. When Kahl establishes himself towards the end of the play as the art buyer he takes control of the room, almost like a dictator. He has the money and therefore has the power. The two siblings seemingly bend to every will and yet all you can think about is him dancing around in tight underwear. Kahl is a dangerous character as he displays a open racism and misogyny. He is open about how he sees “ethnic” women as objects, something he can buy, and he does attempt so.  An uncomfortable scene plays where he offers more money for the painting should Judith go out to dinner with him, Judith entertains this idea, soaking up the power of having a worth of the painting in her court before obviously refusing. This is when Nicola offers herself up to Kahl in a more sexual manner, showing that she is willing to do anything to profit off the painting done by Hitler. This takes place at the rotting end of the stage, showing Nicola has lost all power she had over the play.

To conclude, Nachtland is a deeply philosophical play exposing deep-rooted antisemitism. No characters truly win, and the beloved painting is destroyed. The visuals of the play enhance the performance but it’s the construction of the characters under Brechtian influences that makes Nachtland, the play it is.

Bibliography:

Mayenburg. Marius von, Nachtland, translated by Maja Zade, Faber, London, 2024

Heaney, Seamus. Cassandra, The Spirit Level, Faber, London, 2001

Plath, Sylvia. Daddy, 1965

Brecht, Bertold, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, Bloomsbury, London, 2009