Beware of Pity (Ungeduld des Herzens) – Barbican/Complicite and Schaubühne Berlin, London

I very much admire Complicite’s work.  As you will have spotted from my reviews I’m more often drawn to big names when booking cultural outings, but Complicite is a theatre company I’m more than happy to take a chance on, even when it means spending a Sunday afternoon indoors reading German surtitles.

This production didn’t disappoint.  Simon McBurney takes as his source material a novel by Stefan Zweig, centred on events taking place in the Austro-Hungarian Empire shortly before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  A clever device at the opening of the play – where a museum display of the Archduke’s bloody clothing becomes the central character Anton Hofmiller’s costume – sets the scene for a story in which the characters rush headlong into a series of events that seem preordained.  Hofmiller’s faux pas in inviting the paralysed daughter of a rich local family to dance is the birth of the titular pity, his moral weakness leading him to extend false affection and false hope to Edith.

The tension in the play is heightened by the democratic division of dialogue: the actors reciting lines at a cracking pace into microphones standing across the mostly bare stage.  The soundscape reinforces the mood, and the use of video and camera techniques adds visual interest to the stark set design.  If I have one criticism, it’s that surtitles can be hard work with a fast-moving play, so at times I was conscious of not actually looking at the actors enough, particularly when the action was split between the voice and movement of two different actors.  All in all though it’s a smashing play that left me somewhat emotionally drained, with a nod at the end to our current geopolitical situation and the dangers therein.  Not bad for a Sunday afternoon’s work.