Conspiracy is the story of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, the secret 90 minute-meeting chaired by the SS which put in place the Final Solution, responsible for the deaths of at least 6 million Jews (as well as some other groups). This stage version by Strawmoddie and RFT, a remount of their 2018 production, was adapted from the 2001 TV film of the same name, itself adapting the authentic script taken from the only surviving transcript from the meeting.
Following in the steps of the HBO film is no mean feat. Its cast included Colin Firth, David Threlfall, Kenneth Branagh, and Stanley Tucci, the latter two of which won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award respectively. However the point of the story is to put you into the room of the most evil “this could have been an email” office meeting in history, and this stage production therefore has the advantage of being able to literally put you in the same room as these people, filing in as you do between two sets of chairs, one around tables for the conference, and the other in lines for the audience.
Before we even start, we can see the clear attention paid to everything, from the more relatable food platters and stationary to the more historical uniforms, and after we are joined by the cast we continue to see this attention to reality, with both the TV origins and the reality of the situation respected through the snippets of conversation that come to us over the overall mutterings of the Nazi socialising.
The cast is uniformly (oh no, a pun) good, each a clear human being with a job, while also clearly being… well, who history has correctly judged them to be. The two halves are clearly in evidence, for example, in Heydrich’s musings on a peaceful retirement interspersing his one-track obsession with genocide.
It was at the trial of Adolf Eichman – present here, of course – that the phrase “the banality of evil” was first coined, and its meaning is clearly in evidence here, albeit brought enthrallingly to life by Strawmoddie and RFT. Decades of over-exposure in comedies and pulp entertainment have sometimes made it difficult to recognise this evil in the act, and Conspiracy is an important reminder that it is done by people, with deniability, rules, purpose, and sometimes even shame, but done none the less.
Conspiracy is running at Hill Street Theatre until August 25th. Tickets can be found at: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/conspiracy
Reviewer: Oliver Giggins
Reviewed: 18th August 2024
North West End UK Rating: