What a day, as Kwasi Kwarteng might say, to open a play about the chasm between rich and poor. German expressionist Georg Kaiser’s drama, unstaged in the UK for 100 years, raises urgent questions about inequality and exploitation, workers’ uprisings, the responsibility of the one per cent, dynastic wealth and the far-reaching legacy of childhood poverty.
That it does so chiefly through the plight of a conniving authoritarian millionaire (rather than, say, the cashier everyman of Kaiser’s From Morning to Midnight) risks playing the world’s smallest violin. But Emily Louizou’s bracing production for Collide ensures the issues are pungent and honours Kaiser’s earnest plea for the common good, without quite solving the problem of the play’s plodding second half.
Although it premiered during the first world war, Kaiser does not directly place the story within his country’s social turmoil and economic collapse, nor present rounded individuals from its labour force, but offers a non-naturalistic parable. The Millionaire (Stuart Laing) has risen from destitution which still haunts him so much that, for his regular meetings with the needy – who are handed cheques to assuage his guilt – he employs a double, The Secretary (Adam Woolley), in his place.
A striking design by Ioana Curelea solves the need to cast identical actors in the roles – Laing and Woolley first appear with their faces fully covered with red material, in one of several eerily choreographed routines. Woolley retains the mask throughout, creating a chilling visage that is paralleled in a scarlet-daubed portrait on the wall. Laing is gruffly combustible as the Millionaire, clashing with his eldest child (a daughter rather than the son of Kaiser’s original) who rebukes the family’s riches. Joanne Marie Mason gives the daughter the right weary certainty, offset by lighter comic performances from the multi-roling Esme Scarborough and Arielle Zilkha.
Louizou’s occasionally warmer, larkier adaptation of BJ Kenworthy’s translation foregrounds the family drama yet these are relationships Kaiser never fully fleshed out. Too many of the ideas at play – such as the need for a societal reset – remain abstract and addition of humour and song don’t always fit. But the production often has a dynamic panache, thanks in part to Ioli Filippakopoulou’s movement direction. David Denyer’s score provides an unnerving industrialised clang, Amy Hill’s lighting design evokes the psychedelic colours of a reef and Kaiser’s closing metaphor of a harmonious coral colony lingers in the mind. Collide are clearly a company to keep an eye on.
At the Finborough theatre, London, until 29 October
