Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine

I finished Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine last night. I have seen the movie and have to admit I put it down as another Bette Davis potboiler. Maybe it is the times, maybe it's in the reading, maybe both, but there is a bit more here than a anti-Nazi propaganda.

Like Little Foxes, those who stand by doing nothing while evil occurs are condemned.

Another three act play, no character like Regina Hubbard of Little Foxes, a message play wrapped in a thriller, a little drawing room comedy and a couple of anti-Nazi speeches that actually work in the context of the plot, but I wondered how it would eork nowadays. Turns out it has been revived several times in the past decade:

2014 Chicago's Artistic Theater:

But, this production of Watch on the Rhine is worthy of being seen as the theme and the acting carried the production.

 2017 Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine opened less than a year before the U.S. entered World War II, so there's no denying that her anti-fascism drama – really more of a drawing-room thriller – was timely and relevant to her audience. Here we are 76 years later staring down a coproduction of the play from the Guthrie Theater and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Watch on the Rhine has aged pretty darn well. The 1941 play will remain resonant, it seems, as long as there are power-wielding people in the world who, as described by one of the characters, are smart, sick, and cruel.

 2015 Annapolis, MD, from the Director's Notes: 

The character of Teck DeBrancovis is not an aberrant human being. He is not an ‘evil’ man. To describe him in such terms is to miss the point of the play. It is Teck’s self-interest and his amorality that are his downfall. Left unchecked, his brand of cynicism can undermine the very foundation of the society we hold so dear, NOT to take arms to fight against this is abhorrent. In the play, it is Kurt Muller who steps in to save innocent lives; a person with rock solid ideals. Where are such men in 2015?

2017 Washington, DC:

 TheaterMania

It might be tempting to write off any play written 76 years ago as dated and not relevant to contemporary America. But one of Hellman's main concerns in Watch on the Rhine is with the role of immigration to the United States. One of her characters strongly emphasizes how valuable Americans believe immigration to be. And the play primarily pits simple, honest people against a vicious criminal who insinuates himself into a family that values only straightforwardness and truth. It reminds us that the issues of honesty, morality, and immigration are still so very relevant today.

 Marsha Mason Finds Poetry and Prophecy in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine

In rehearsal, are you all making a conscious effort to draw parallels between what happens in this play and current events outside your door in Washington, D.C.?

I don't think we even have to try. Kurt, the German anti-Fascist character, talks about how "the Fascists came in on the shoulders of the big business men that were legends." My character also makes an interesting statement to him when we first meet. I ask him if he's a "radical," which you could totally substitute with, "Are you a terrorist?" The resonance is really extraordinary. Lillian Hellman is in the halls of those wonderful playwrights like Inge and O'Neill and Miller. All we have to do is say it clearly and focus on what's important and it'll be there.

But just so no one thinks all is sweetness and light, back to Chicago: 

...But the play hasn't held up as well as some of her other work. Clunky plots have that tendency, but Hellman always knew her way around a good line. "I don't think he likes his own taste, which is very discriminating of him," goes a zingier bit of dialogue."

sch 5/1/22 

Here is what I wrote about Hellman's other plays The Children's Hour, Days to Come, and Little Foxes.