Judgement Day
Almeida, London
In the year Ödön von Horváth was writing Judgement Day, English audiences were introduced to Noel Coward’s Still Life (later adapted to become Brief Encounter). Both plays begin in railway stations, feature strangers enduring a tedious wait for trains and involve a love match which the mean-spirited community would have frowned on, had it known about it. However, while Coward’s audience was largely blind to the impending global conflict, von Horváth was in Germany/Austria to observe at first hand the malign influence of the Third Reich.
Rather than mention the regime directly, which was very wise, Judgement Day is set in a town which strangers find stifling. Yet it appears not untypical, populated by the innkeeper and the chemist, the popular stationmaster and his deeply unpopular wife. One day there is a train crash and 18 people are dead.
The stationmaster, until then a stereotypically conscientious German worker, did not operate the signal in time. He refuses to accept the disaster was principally his fault, as he was being involuntarily distracted by Anna, the innkeeper’s daughter.
However, it appears that he will manage to cover up his error, – until his wife testifies. Initially, she defends her husband. But when she is dismissed as irrelevant by the investigators and goaded by the townspeople, she changes her mind. She is now a key witness for the prosecution.
Anna then perjures herself in court and the husband is acquitted. He is a hero and Anna is a heroine. The wife has to leave town.
Enter conscience. Lady Macbeth-like, Anna cannot live with her lies. Further, her instability means she is in danger of exposing their joint deception. Macbeth, when pricked by this sort of guilt, decided to further his crimes.
Here is the familiar message that crime feeds on itself. What makes this play different is the emphasis it places on how the community cannot shirk its collective blame – as its members laud and ostracise in accordance with the prevailing whim. What they are doing may be not be against the law, but it saps all moral courage.
The chemist, initially it seems, no more than a cipher than a character, comes to the fore in recognising this. He does what he believes to be right and is prepared to accept the consequences.
The resistance, therefore, is expressionistic. If violence is seething beneath the surface with these townspeople, in reality the Nazis were rooting out any ethical qualms. Expressionism also explains how the
stationmaster is so quickly – and perhaps too quickly – turned from hero to villain.
If the story seems a little rushed in places, the pace and structure of the drama keep one constantly alert. Christopher Hampton must be given credit for his modern translation. You expect quality acting at the Almeida and without exception we have it from a cast including Tom Georgeson, Laura Donnelly, Suzanne Burden and Patrick Drury. The costumes are authentic – the stationmaster’s uniform is similar to that worn by the Gestapo. The bleak stage and the cold back walls of the theatre add to the atmosphere of the evening.
Ödön von Horváth died in a freak accident in 1938, just after he had left Vienna for good. Judgement Day was given its first performance in that city in 1945, the year Brief Encounter came out in the cinema. The Second World War was over and Noel Coward suggested there was nothing for Britons to do but return to pre-war humdrum life. For Austria and Germany, things were different. Then it truly was Judgement Day.
Richard Woulfe
