Perhaps I was reacting to a boatload of rave reviews and prizes that put me in a “Show me!” mood or perhaps I was simply tired from too-much-Thanksgiving, but I was less impressed with Michael Frayn’s Democracy than I expected to be.
To be fair, Frayn is one of the few playwrights today whose works are usually worth the absurd admission price and they are invariably well-made, but his snapshot of German politics in the Sixties had a tinge of “by the dots” about it–Masterpiece Theatre without the masterpiece. The play is meant to reveal the machinations of a working democracy, but I didn’t learn nearly as much about then Chancellor Willy Brandt and his colleagues as I hoped to and I wasn’t particularly stimulated to think about “democracy” in a larger sense. The observation that our system is often dominated by competing corrupt forces is hardly revolutionary. The double life of Germans of that time, constrained to spy endlessly on friends and relatives, has been better described, even dramatized, elsewhere (early le Carré). And regrettably, by far the most theatrically compelling figure of the period, East German spymaster Markus Wolf plays only an off-stage role. (I wonder how many in the audience even recognized the largely unexplained references to “Mischa” by an East German handler–or knew why that nickname was chosen. The leader of the East German Stasi was Jewish.)
Left to carry the drama almost exclusively is the weak-willed and confused East German infiltrator in Brandt’s administration Gunter Guillaume. An ambivalent Iago reporting on Brandt and then manipulating him, the historical Guillaume was apparently Frayn’s inspiration for the play. It’s easy to understand the playwright’s attraction to this little man caught between ambitious scoundrels of East and West, but the result is a somewhat crippled play. Portrayed on Broadway by Richard Thomas, the East German spy provides nearly all the drama’s interesting or surprising moments, as well as almost its entire historical context. No one else has much of a role in the story. Even Brandt, potentially an intriguing Othello to Guillaume’s Iago, is comparatively lifeless except for some brief moments of drama when the chancellor is given to suspect his adviser. We don’t even get a full sense of what Brandt stood for, other than some vague peacenik yearnings leavened with some, again off-stage, philandering. Perhaps that’s the point, that there wasn’t much “there there” to Brandt, but if so, even that is soft-pedaled.
In the end, Democracy is polite theatre about an impolite subject. It is risk-free, careful not to offend its originally British audience while offering the requisite opportunities for that country’s polished acting pool. Like many successful playwrights in today’s iffy theatrical market, Frayn has formed an entente cordiale with his audience. Two of the plays more pointed laugh lines are “What does Communism have to do with the Left?” and “Never mind football! Try parliamentary democracy!” The audience is encouraged to chortle at a kind of soft cultural relativism of low expectations, their conventional liberal values reinforced and almost willfully unexamined. These views also fit a majority of that tiny segment of the American community still going to serious drama on Broadway. It’s not quite a “status/business deal” in the way the purchase of modern art was described by Tom Wolfe years ago, but it’s not all that far off.
Nevertheless, I am almost certain without having seen it that the London production was a more satisfying theatrical experience than ours. The flat American accents of the Broadway cast leave the play sounding off-key. We are used to Europeans speaking English-English. And James Naughton as Willy Brandt is oddly more suggestive of John Kerry in appearance (tall with big hair) and style than of the undoubtedly more charismatic and interesting German chancellor. With some minor exceptions (Robert Prosky as Herbert Wehner) other American cast members don’t have the chops to handle the European ambience. Despite Michael Blakemore’s experienced directorial hand, this leaves the play to fend for itself.
–Roger L. Simon is a novelist and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter who blogs at www.rogerlsimon.com.