The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 2: Six Plays

H. I. D. (HESS IS DEAD)

Howard Brenton zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba H. I. D. (HESS IS DEAD) As for the present, leaving history aside for the moment, I warn you I shall complain to the management. —Mikhail Bulgakov,zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVU The Master and Margarita Author's Note zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWV H.LD. (Hess is Dead) was conceived at the Mickery Theatre, Amsterdam , in a series of exploratory and, for me, explosively exciting discussions with the Mickery's Artistic Director, Ritsaert ten Cate, in the autumn of 1987 and the spring of 1988. The Mickery's Dutch production was performed, under the direction of Lodewijk de Boer, in a translation by de Boer and Anthony Akerman and opened in Amsterdam on 7 December 1989, not in a theatre but in the Waag. The Waag is an old customs house that once stood at one of the gates of the city. At its center there is a seventeenth-century dissecting room, a place of enlightenment and science. Criminals hanged just outside the gate were rushed, fresh, to the dissecting room, where their humanity was laid bare by the surgeon's knife to medical students and any interested citizens, who paid for admittance . On the domed ceiling the famous doctors, who cut the dead beneath to enlighten the public, had their names and badges of office painted above a lengthy Latin inscription which, more or less, reads, "The lives of the dead examined here were worthless, but in death they aid our understanding of life." The resonances of performing this play, which attempts to dissect the murky entrails of the "truth" of Rudolf Hess's death in Spandau prison using the unscientific precision of drama, in this famous room, are farreaching . To present such a play there of all places is a typical piece of Mickery cultural mischief-making. Anyone writing about the death of Hess has to be indebted to Hess: A Tale of Two Murders by Hugh Thomas (Hodder & Stoughton ), which is not at all the "lunatic fringe" book which the British government wishes it were. I also want to thank Richard NortonTaylor , who has pursued the story of the "Hess Affair" relentlessly in The Guardian, and who very kindly sent me a file of remarkable zyxwvutsr 333 334 THEATRE OF THE HOLOCAUST material. Needless to say, they are not responsible for any of the speculations in the play. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHG H.LD. (Hess is Dead) was first staged at the Almeida Theatre , London, by the Royal Shakespeare Company on 29 September 1989. CHARACTERS zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYX PALMER CHARITY NICOLE OFFICER RAYMOND LUBERzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA (unseen) SETTING A room of tapestries which hang from a great height, but which do not quite reach the ground. The tapestries form a quadrangular room. The tapestries are blue. They have a trompe l'oeil effect, describing a room in a late seventeenth century palace. With the movement of performers, members of the audience, or draughts, the tapestries swing. They should be heavy, or if of paper, weighted so that their movement is languid. About the "room" there are gold, upright chairs, for the audience to sit upon and for the performers to use. If because of fire regulations, the audience's chairs have to be bound together, they should be bound in clumps. The audience would then "sit about" the room in irregular groups. Between the chairs are television monitors on trolleys, which the audience can move for their own convenience. A central VCR machine , upon which the performers sometimes play video tapes, is also on a mobile trolley. There should be a sense that the whole space is "bugged," tense with multiple recording devices, audio and visual. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 335 H. L D. (HESS IS DEAD) zyxwvutsrqponmlk SCENE 1 LARRY PALMER,zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA sitting upon a chair. He is waiting. By the chair, a large briefcase. Watch and wait. He watches his hands, waiting. PALMER: YOU say yes, that's what I Believe in, that's my certainty in the back Of my head. No, neck spine Lodged between the shoulder blades my moral self What I believe, a lump just beneath The skin. Part of me, taken for granted A bit of bone a bit of gristle a vertebra A sense of right and wrong Part of you zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIH 337 338 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA THEATRE OF THE HOLOCAUST inert, just lodged there Year in, year out not giving the slightest ache. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXW (A silence, PALMER still. Then he straightens his back. Moves a shoulder uncomfortably. He shrugs and slumps, staring...