Fringe stalwart Phil Willmott has followed the example of some of the West End
directors in forming his own eponymous production company, although unlike them his
is a not-for-profit venture. He opens a short residency of two very contrasting
works at the Union with Bertolt Brecht's rarely-performed indictment of the rise of
the Nazis,
Fear and Misery of the Third Reich. There's ominous mentions of
the regime's ambitions to invade other nations and spread their power and ideology,
but the play's real focus is on Germany itself in the years before World War II
actually broke out, and the oppressive atmosphere which sees people betray their
neighbours before they can be betrayed themselves. A pair of Hitler Youth (Ben
Kerfoot and Tom Williams) patrol as a number of loosely-connected sketches play out,
opening with a factory worker (Joshua Ruhle) refusing to join in with the official
propaganda, and being carted off to prison.
