The little dictator

>> Hitler reduces its subject to a nutty shut-in

by AMY BARRATT

Twice in recent weeks, I've gone to plays thinking I was going to see Quebec artists finally dealing with the history of anti-Semitism in our fair country. First there was Le Visiteur, which depicted Sigmund Freud enduring threats and harassment by the Gestapo in 1938 Vienna. It starred Jean-Louis Roux, the subject of a scandal several years ago surrounding his admission that he wore a swastika while at university during the war. Unfortunately, that juicy backstage tidbit provided more tension than the entire play.

That was a pity since--what with Le Visiteur opening the same week that the National Assembly voted to reprimand Yves Michaud for his anti-Jewish remarks--the climate was ripe for some soul-searching.

Just as Michaud was piping up again, promising to take the National Assembly to court to defend his dubious honour, I went to see the Nouveau Théâtre Experimental's Hitler. This time the advance publicity suggested that collaborators Jean-Pierre Ronfard and Alexis Martin might be heading into territory where no sovereignist had dared to go. "What is a race, a nation, a people?" asks the flyer, rhetorically.

The play offers no debate on that subject, only Hitler's own well-known views expounded by a clownish, unthreatening Fuehrer.

Martin's portrayal of the man many people see as the incarnation of evil in the 20th century focuses on physical mannerisms and wacko theories about nutrition and painting. It's true that all of Hitler's minor obsessions were, in his mind, pieces of the master plan, but this play's emphasis on them makes him seem like any ordinary nutcase. Even the bunker, which is the setting of the entire drama, is reminiscent of a madman's cell. The reality that his unspeakable plans are actually being carried out beyond that cell is never felt.

Surely what's interesting about Adolf Hitler as a historical personage is not his obsessions, but how he managed to get a whole nation to carry them out. Although the character speaks briefly of whipping up a mass reaction at the Nuremberg rallies, we don't see any of this man's supposed charisma in Martin's portrayal.

Ronfard, meanwhile, should be ashamed of himself for appearing in this piece. His role, of Hitler's lackey Wiesenbach, consists of appearing at the door whenever Hitler calls for something, clicking his heels and chanting, "Jawohl, mein Fuehrer" before ducking out again. It's embarrassing to see a respected teacher-director brought so low.

The most interesting moment in the play is when Martin and Ronfard step out of character and discuss Hitler in their roles as writer-directors. Even here though, the issues that they bring up are so trivial in light of the man's deeds: their attempt, for example, to make French sound more like German in the script by choosing words with lots of hard consonants. What a pointless intellectual exercise. They also imply that health nuts and the anti-smoking lobby are our contemporary Nazis. How banal. I would never accuse these two artists of choosing subject matter simply for shock value; however, whatever reasons they had for wanting to explore the character of Hitler remain a mystery to me after seeing the work.

I didn't expect to "like" a play about Adolf Hitler. I did expect to be offended, challenged, at least kept awake.

Hitler runs to March 10 at Espace Libre, $18, 521-4191