The Investigation
Young Vic, London
A SOMBRE thought: genocide lives on because human beings get a lot out of it. They rejoice in their power over others; they enjoy killing other humans and they don’t feel guilty at all. Inevitably, any account of the Nazi concentration camps prompts these kinds of reflections – especially when the words spoken on stage have the unmistakable ring of truth.
Ever since Theodor Adorno argued that: “Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaricâ€, the role of fictional representations of genocide has been criticised and viewed with suspicion. So Peter Weiss’s The Investigation, which was a 1965 pioneer of verbatim theatre, starts off well as an edited version of the 1963-65 Frankfurt trial in which 319 witnesses testified to their horrific treatment at the hands of concentration camp guards.
The original play ran for some five hours, so it’s a mercy that this version, performed in French from an adaptation by Jean Beaudrillard, is less than 90 minutes long. Even at this short length, there is something uniquely terrible about the recital of atrocity in matter-of-fact language. The words of the courtroom – including the frequent use of the address “Witness†– add to the play’s sense of authenticity.
Performed by Urwintore, a Rwandan theatre company directed by Dorcy Rugamba and Isabelle Gyselinx, The Investigation assumes another layer of meaning. On the first day of the Rwandan genocide in April 1994, Rugamba’s family was murdered and he escaped to safety. Now, 13 years later, he marshals his actors to tell a tale of genocide in a play which never mentions the fact that most of the inmates of the camps were Jewish.
Weiss’ play is an investigation into the truth of language: the witnesses all agree on who did what to whom, but the accused deny all knowledge of atrocities and say they were only obeying orders. One person’s word is set against another’s. Yet it is also clear the witnesses are telling the truth and that the accused are lying.
Somehow, the language of true memory is so simple and straightforward that you just know it couldn’t be made up.
Rugamba’s production fields seven actors, who play both witnesses and accused. This device suggests we are all equally capable of being sadists (if we are given permission by those in power) and victims (if we are unlucky enough to be caught). But it’s tough to watch and hear the relentless testimony of horror – on the press night, several people walked out.
To shake things up a bit, Urwintore also mark the transitions between scenes with moments of song or – in one initially perplexing fragment – by playing a scene in Rwandan. Although all the actors are dignified and perform their roles with a simple kind of controlled fervour, I didn’t really think that these transitions worked – they added little to the bald skeleton of the play.
The Investigation is a hard piece to endure. Your mind freezes up with the detail of the horror and your stomach is in knots. At the same time, it is unutterably depressing to realise that ordinary people can – and do – behave like beasts. It’s hard not to conclude that the camp guards, like the Hutus in Rwanda, were not just obeying orders, but were deeply committed to their task of extermination. A sombre thought; a sombre play.
Aleks Sierz
