It’s no surprise that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s acclaimed 2006 drama, The lives of others, which won the Academy Award for Best International Film, should resonate just as forcefully today, as AI makes state surveillance an increasingly sophisticated and terrifying reality. Anyone returning from the documentary on Gaza Nazafor example, does so while casting a troubled glance at his smartphone.
And who better to adapt the film for the stage than Robert Icke, who made his name with his groundbreaking version, starring Duncan Macmillan, of George Orwell’s film. 1984 and was acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic with his contemporary version of Oedipusstarring Mark Strong and Tony winner Lesley Manville. Von Donnersmarck Ensemble The lives of others the same year in which Orwell’s premonitory fiction takes place, so this production seems like a perfect marriage in a dystopian paradise.
Icke’s adaptation sticks closely to von Donnersmarck’s original screenplay. It’s East Berlin, the Cold War. Stasi official Gerd Wiesler (Stephen Dillane), a staunch supporter of the communist regime, is given a new target: playwright Georg Dreyman (Luke Thompson). As “a non-subversive playwright read in the West,” Dreyman seems an unlikely source of suspicion. But the order was given by Wiesler’s slimy, careerist boss, Grubitz (Paul Higgins), at the behest of Hempf (Andrew Woodall), a party minister. Hempf’s motivation is not ideology but lust – he simply wants the writer to step aside to facilitate his pursuit of Dreyman’s actress-lover, Christa-Maria Sieland (Keira Knightley).
That’s why Wiesler sends his team into Dreyman’s apartment, searching every nook and cranny possible, while Wiesler himself sits in the attic with headphones and a typewriter and listens.
Icke uses his formidable talent for imaginative and dynamic multimedia staging to manifest the act of surveillance – inherently covert, out of sight – into something extremely tangible. He was greatly aided in this by the remarkable ensemble of designer Hildegard Bechtler. Dreyman’s apartment is a huge, fully furnished, three-dimensional creation, constantly and rapidly rotating. Often a moving stage simply offers a changing view of static actors, but this one allows the audience to follow multiple characters as they move around the apartment, in and out of rooms, with the action often taking place in different spaces at once.
The advantage is evident almost immediately at a crowded arts party – which represents for the Stasi “a prime hunting ground for subversion… with people who can’t keep their mouths shut” – where door-crashing Wiesler gets his first close-up glimpse of his prey; then again as wiretaps invade the same now empty space.
The apartment will occasionally deconstruct itself, its walls pushed aside to make way for a bar, or Wiesler’s own drab house – some of the sequences almost defy logic. The walls also act as screens for videographer Tal Yarden’s black-and-white Big Brotherish images, including close-ups of interrogations taking place live behind the scenes.
Off to the side is Wiesler’s small table, which he shares with a subordinate who works the night shift. Although this depicts the attic, the strongest conceit of the series involves Dillane walking unnoticed among the other characters, even at one point sitting on the couch between them. This suggests both the intensity of Wiesler’s eavesdropping and his insidious intrusion. This presence also takes on metaphorical weight, as the snoop becomes a sort of guardian angel to the unsuspecting people down below.
Much like in the film, the speed with which Wiesler begins to sympathize with the couple can feel like a stretch, like the fulfillment of a romanticized wish. That said, it fits with the stubborn optimism of humanity that fuels this material. Von Donnersmarck provided numerous reasons for the spy’s compassion, particularly the effect on Dreyman of the suicide of his blacklisted director and mentor, and Christa-Maria’s heartbreaking inability – such is the state’s drive to destroy lives and livelihoods – to refuse the venal minister’s sexual attentions.
Wiesler’s turnaround takes the play into more conventional thriller territory as Dreyman is pushed to attempt something subversive. Wiesler plans to keep him out of trouble, but Grubitz takes matters into his own hands and gets closer. While the film handled this transition superbly, the play fares less well and, ironically, technical virtuosity is partly to blame. Once so dazzling, the constant revolution of the stage, the mechanically fluid choreography of the actors around it, the sheer repetitiveness of it all – heightened by composer Max Richter’s overly insistent score of shrill strings, bells and whistles – now slowly combine to ease the tension, instead of increasing it.
And while tackling the mechanisms of state repression so well, Icke and his team lost some of the weary gloom of the era, not least by limiting Wiesler’s solitary life outside of his work. The use of Bowie’s “Sound and Vision” and Mama Cass’s “Make Your Own Kind of Music” grabs attention but, for a track about listening, there could have been a little more silence.
In a return to the stage after 11 years (his last appearance was as the title character in Therese Raquin on Broadway), Knightley demonstrates what an accomplished and increasingly confident actress she had become during this time. While Christa-Maria was effectively a supporting character in the film, she takes center stage here – from dynamic party hostess who captivates her guests with an impromptu performance, to desperate victim of the minister’s attentions (her sexual assault is extremely difficult to watch, not least because of Knightley’s performance) and Wiesler’s albeit reluctant interrogation. Unsurprisingly, when Christa-Maria’s tribulations are captured on the video screen, Knightley’s close-ups are sensational.
Dillane, a master of painful introversion, probably would have killed for a close-up. Instead, he too often limits himself to wandering around in his headphones, reacting to those around him, sometimes lost amid the showy staging. But the actor is perfectly cast, glacially conveying Wiesler’s dry, driven nature and the awkwardness with which he carries his newfound benevolence. And it’s usually Dillane who provides the bursts of humor in the play. “I’m nobody,” he says believably when an unsuspecting Christa-Maria welcomes him to the party. “Who told you that?” she asks. “My mother.”
Around this duo, the acting can be indifferent. As blacklisted director Jerska, Nick Holder hits the wrong note, delivering an ugly, thuggish personality that denies any sympathy for the man. Higgins amusingly riffs on his obsequious toad of Slow horsesbut he lacks the steely calculation behind his easy smile. And while Thompson is quite effective and likeable, his Dreyman doesn’t really register. The mild-mannered idealist can be a thankless role to play, but this performance highlights how effortlessly charming and touching Sebastian Koch was in the film, with the pathos he created sorely lacking here.
Location: Adelphi Theatre, London
Starring: Keira Knightley, Stephen Dillane, Luke Thompson, Calum Finlay, Paul Higgins, Leda Hodgson, Nick Holder, Irfan Shamji, Adrian Woodall
Playwright: Robert Icke, adapted from the film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Director: Robert Icke
Scenography and costumes: Hildegard Bechtler
Lighting designer: Jon Clark
Music: Max Richter
Sound designer and additional music: Giles Thomas
Video designer: Tal Yarden
Presented by Sonia Friedman Productions
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