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Berlin

Joanna Murray-Smith and the snares of history
Melbourne Theatre Company
by
ABR Arts 26 April 2021

Berlin

Joanna Murray-Smith and the snares of history
Melbourne Theatre Company
by
ABR Arts 26 April 2021
Grace Cummings as Charlotte and Michael Wahr as Tom in Berlin (photograph by Jeff Busby)
Grace Cummings as Charlotte and Michael Wahr as Tom in Berlin (photograph by Jeff Busby)

Berlin, by Joanna Murray-Smith, is an intense, very wordy, imperfectly plotted, but nonetheless stylish play. ‘Stylish’ is a strange word to describe a play about young love sabotaged by tragic secrets and the legacy of the Holocaust. Shouldn’t it also be ‘heart-breaking’, ‘harrowing’, or at least ‘poignant’? Perhaps, but ‘stylish’ is the right word for a play – a thriller, in fact – that is also a swiftly argued essay on the difficulties faced by sensitive and ethical individuals who want to free themselves from the snares of history to make a new future.

Here, as in earlier works, Murray-Smith frets her text with the glitter of a cool cosmopolitanism. The dialogue swerves – credibly enough – from the politics of contemporary art to an eloquent commentary on public monuments, from the poetry of Emily Dickinson to the repatriation of colonial-era artefacts. It’s the sort of play where retro chic punk music sits comfortably next to a spine-tingling string quartet. And there are plenty of witty snapshot observations – mostly sardonic in tone – of life in contemporary Berlin, with its tourists and artists and hipsters and migrants.

From the New Issue

Comment (1)

  • I was sitting in the third row and couldn't see anything upstairs. What a rookie error, given that they build the set and rehearse there. I also agree with everything you said. The two brothers could have broken in when she was at work and stolen the painting.
    Posted by leo
    29 April 2021