One-man drama

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33959, 27 September 1975, Page 11

One-man drama

Seven Russian soldiers and officers were imprisoned by the Germans during the last war, in a Polish monastery without food, water or clothing, and then abandoned. When Russian troops arrived 60 days later, only two officers were found alive, both crazed, having survived by eating the remains of their comrades. Both were given a meal and shot, and the monastery wasblown up. This grisly but true incident is the subject of a new British National Theatre production, written by a Canadian journalist, Barry Collins, and directed by Peter Hall, writes Roy Gutman, an N.Z.P.A.-Reuter correspondent in London. The play, “Judgement,” imagines that one of the survivors came out sane. It consists entirely of a speech of two hours and a half by Captain Andrei Vukhov to his judges, justifying his behaviour and that of his comrade, who lies unseen in a nearby room mad and unable to speak or listen.

The speech is delivered without interruption and

is claimed to be the longest monologue tn the his tory of the theatre. There are almost no props, and the actor, Colin Blakely, dressed in a white hospital tunic, gives a powerful performance without a slip, in the theatre in the round of the Institute of Comtemporary Arts. To cope with subject matter few people would be able to think, no less talk about, the author has Vukhov adopt a highly rational stance toward the events, which he himself calls "alert neutrality." It makes it possible to sit through the absorbing play, but it removes much of the intrinsic horror. The explanation (or the execution is given by the author, George Steiner, tn his book “Tne Death of Tragedy,” from which the theme of the play was taken. They were shot, Steiner wrote, “lest the soldiers see to what abjection their former officers had been reduced.”