Theatre review: Mephisto [A Rhapsody]

Deconstructing itself as it goes along, Samuel Gallet's Mephisto [A Rhapsody] is based on a novel by Klaus Mann which was banned for decades – as argued successfully in court by his family, the real-life target of his satire was all-too-easily identifiable. That target was a German actor whose liberal principles went out the window when he realised the Nazis could be good for his career, and ended up performing Faust for Hitler. Gallet transposes the action to present-day France, and the actor making a deal with a metaphorical devil is Aymeric (Leo Bill,) a company member in a provincial rep. They tour Chekhov around a region with poor transport links to the rest of the country, which leaves it a financial and cultural backwater, and a centre for the rise of neo-fascism. Aymeric, along with colleagues Luca (Elizabeth Chan) and Nicole (Subika Anwar-Khan) urge the artistic director Eva (Tamzin Griffin) to ditch the classics in favour of more urgent work addressing the current political crisis.

But the theatre can’t even stop its own members from embracing the far right, as evidenced by actor Michael (Rhys Rusbatch, who I’m seeing on stage for the first time in nearly a decade and he’s still only getting the left nipple out, that’s some commitment to a personal brand.)

Aymeric is very vocal about his beliefs while questioning how much theatre can actually do to change things; but it’s clear early on that he’s willing to go to some lengths to kickstart his career, when he pursues a romance with Barbara (Rebecca Humphries,) whose mother just happens to be artistic director of a major theatre company in the capital. The actor’s star begins to rise at the same time as that of a new far-right party, and when Muller (Sean Jackson) wins the election, his offer to Aymeric to run his own theatre is a hard one to turn down.

Kirsty Housley’s production does very well to stop Gallet’s play from feeling quite as disjointed as it actually is; the first act is largely a self-skewering satire of artists exactly like those on stage and plays exactly like this one, as the characters debate their responsibility towards the audience, while beating themselves up over whether they can actually have any meaningful effect. Basia Bińkowska’s set reflects the audience back to themselves, just like the characters are worried their theatre reflects audiences' opinions back at them rather than challenging (it’s generally a stylish design although I don’t really like the configuration of the Gate that makes for a very wide, shallow stage – even sitting at the centre there’s a lot of craning the neck either side to see the actors.) Anna-Maria Nabirye plays Juliette, a superstar actress and singer who’s one of the most influential characters but also one of the most threatened, as she’s black and her status won’t mean anything if racists get into power.. After the interval we get a further metatheatrical level as her opening speech blurs the lines between Juliette and Nabirye herself, examining whether she’s complicit in typecasting herself as slaves, and what it means that two white women commissioned and directed Mephisto itself.

Leo Bill has to be pretty high on the list of actors you’d think of to deliver a frantically self-destructive character, and the energy spills over to the rest of the cast in the play’s best section, as Aymeric begins to find fame and success, while the fascists quietly have their own rise parallel to his. But the play does overall feel unbalanced to me: Aymeric’s eventual confrontation with the fact that he’ll go down in history as a collaborator comes in a surreal dream sequence that doesn’t feel as original as what came before, and is over very quickly as Gallet turns his attention to a postscript about Klaus Mann himself in his last days. It’s a disappointingly muddled end to an otherwise dazzlingly odd, dark and intelligent satire.

Mephisto [A Rhapsody] by Samuel Gallet in a version by Chris Campbell, based on the novel by Klaus Mann, is booking until the 26th of October at the Gate Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Cameron Slater.