At London's Old Vic, 'Camp Siegfried' probes American Nazis

LONDON – What could beryllium much American than summertime camp? It has caller air, sailing, cookouts — and, successful Bess Wohl’s caller play, swastikas.

“Camp Siegfried” is based connected a real-life campy connected Long Island successful the 1930s that indoctrinated young German-Americans into Nazi ideology. The play has its opening nighttime Friday astatine London’s Old Vic Theatre, the venue’s archetypal amusement to full-capacity audiences since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Photos from the epoch amusement brownish shirt-wearing teenagers parading with Nazi flags, 60 miles (100 kilometers) eastbound of Manhattan. Like galore Americans, Wohl was unaware of that portion of hidden past — until she recovered herself pandemic-stranded successful a rental location connected Long Island, adjacent to the tract of the camp.

“It was the pandemic, I was location and I conscionable got truly obsessed with the information that determination had been this campy 10 minutes distant from wherever we were staying," said the New York-born writer, whose plays see “Small Mouth Sounds” — acceptable successful a soundless retreat — and the divorcement drama “Grand Horizons,” which had a Broadway tally conscionable earlier the microorganism struck.

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"I started driving astir the streets, which, of course, looked similar these banal Long Island suburban streets. But that, I had recovered out, were erstwhile named Hitler Street and Goebbels Street and each of these things that conscionable sounded incomprehensible to me.”

Camp Siegfried was 1 of respective sponsored by the German-American Bund that aimed to effect Nazi ideology connected American soil. The country aboriginal became a quiescent neighborhood, with bungalows lining streets named for leaders of the Third Reich. The names are agelong gone, but rules requiring properties to beryllium sold to radical of German descent persisted into the 21st century.

Wohl’s probe inspired her play astir 2 campers — a 16-year-old miss and a 17-year-old lad — whose burgeoning narration collides with the insidious ideology of Nazism.

“I was funny successful the mode that that infinitesimal erstwhile you’re forming your individuality and figuring retired who you are is truthful fragile and however easy you tin autumn into thing truly unsafe and evil without adjacent knowing it,” Wohl told the Associated Press.

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Wohl began penning the play during the 2020 U.S. predetermination campaign, and portion it ne'er mentions modern authorities oregon Donald Trump, she notes that the dangers the play explores are “not arsenic acold distant arsenic we mightiness think.”

Director Katy Rudd said the mode utmost ideas instrumentality basal and turn is simply a an all-too-relevant contented successful our “increasingly polarized” 21st-century world.

“We unrecorded successful a antithetic benignant of echo chambers contiguous — they’re online,” said Rudd, who directs actors Patsy Ferran and Luke Thallon successful the two-hander, which runs until Oct. 30. “Misinformation gives oxygen to far-right groups and conspiracy theories tin flash astir the satellite successful minutes. You don’t person to spell to campy anymore to recognize that.”

For writer, formed and crew, the play’s taxable is nary little astonishing than the information it the show is happening astatine all. London theaters were shuttered successful March 2020 and are lone present reopening astatine afloat capacity, pursuing the lifting of societal distancing rules successful England successful July.

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The pandemic has been devastating for the U.K.’s theatre community, with thousands of artists and technicians thrown retired of work, oregon into jobs arsenic supermarket transportation drivers — a caller roar industry. Many signifier companies person been fixed a fiscal lifeline by the government, but they inactive look uncertainty and the fearfulness COVID-19 whitethorn surge again successful the winter.

Rudd has worked implicit the past twelvemonth connected the Old Vic’s In Camera bid of livestreamed plays, played to viewers astir the world, 1 tiny affirmative from the pandemic. Wohl adjacent managed to get a play staged — “Lust,” portion of a bid connected the Seven Deadly Sins performed successful Miami and New York shopfronts implicit the summer.

For formed and crew, being backmost successful a theatre and successful beforehand of an assemblage means mask-wearing, microorganism vigilance and predominant COVID-19 tests. They accidental it’s worthy it.

“I’m rather affectional astir it all,” said Thallon, whose credits see Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” successful the West End and “Present Laughter” astatine the Old Vic.

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“I person not worked similar that, successful adjacent proximity with different histrion — wherever we tin play and situation and person amusive and astonishment each different freely — since March 2020,” helium said. “I don’t cognize however I would person coped if you’d told maine that it would beryllium a twelvemonth and a half, due to the fact that this is each I privation to do. I conscionable privation to bash plays. And I can’t ideate a satellite wherever doing them is made adjacent much harder than it presently is.”

Ferran, whose show successful Tennessee Williams’ “Summer and Smoke” won a best-actress Olivier Award successful 2019, said she felt the aforesaid premix of excitement and apprehension for her industry.

“It’s going to beryllium hard work,” she said. “But there’s a batch of combat to support it going.”

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