Camp Siegfried – The Old Vic, London

A review of Camp Siegfried at the Old Vic. Despite some top notch acting, I wasn’t quite feeling the magic of this American Nazi summer camp play.

Wait… There Were Nazis On Long Island?

Camp Siegfried, a play by Bess Wohl, is a curious one about a little-known piece of Long Island’s history (or at least, a part of Long Island’s history not known to me). In the 1930s, in Yaphank, Long Island, stood one of several summer camps espousing Nazi ideology. This one was owned by the German American Bund, and operated by the German American Settlement League. It was called Camp Siegfried and you could stay, for example, on streets named after Hitler or Goebbels. What is maybe even wilder is the later history of the site and just how long you had to be of German extraction to live there, but that is not the subject of this post so I will leave you to read about it here.

So Camp Siegfried is based on a true story. Even some of the nuttier-sounding parts of the play, like how the teenagers were encouraged to get together to make little Aryan babies. Just… wow. Wohl’s interpretation of Camp Siegfried follows two such teenagers, a boy and a girl. We see them meet. We see them at work and at play. Falling in love. We also see their indoctrination, as one searches for acceptance and the other for something to be part of. It is an interesting premise. However, as we shall see, interesting premises do not automatically make for good theatre viewing.

Camp Siegfried

The Nazi lovebirds in the Old Vic‘s Camp Siegfried are played by Luke Thallon and Patsy Ferran. We saw Thallon very recently as a stand-out performer in After Life. And Ferran a while before that in the Bridge’s A Christmas Carol. Both very good actors, and very good in this, although I didn’t feel the chemistry between them as much as some other reviewers seem to have. To be fair I was in the cheap seats in the circle – maybe being in the stalls would have helped.

I think the thing for me is that I just didn’t quite like the play itself. I found some of the dialogue a little awkward. The characters seemed to fall in and out of fascism (and love) pretty easily. I just didn’t connect with it. What I did love, on the other hand, was the set design and videos. Rosanna Vize designed the set and costumes (she also did Shedding a Skin and The Two Character Play which we’ve seen recently). Vize makes no attempt at a naturalistic camp setting, instead opting for a sort of 1930s modern and minimalist design. I loved it, especially how she utilises the space towards the end of the play. Onto this set Tal Rosner projects contemporary footage, a little like in Leopoldstadt. Just as it did there, it has the effect of bringing home the fact that this is a fictionalised story, but underneath it all is something real. Really effective.

So it’s not that I didn’t enjoy my evening at the Old Vic. It just wasn’t quite the play for me. It’s on at the Old Vic until the end of October, so don’t let me indoctrinate you but perhaps go and make your own mind up.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3/5

Camp Siegfried on until 30 October 2021

Don’t miss out on London theatre news – sign up below: