Caitlin Zambito, Olivia Gill, Paige Simunovich (Photo by Jeff Lorch)
Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
Rogue Machine
Through June 3
RECOMMENDED
Playwright Michelle Kholos Brooks has taken a bizarre fragment of World War II history and woven it into a gripping and darkly comedic allegory that explores how fascism can easily seduce a complacent and distracted population into rejecting democracy. Brooks’s work serves as a compelling reminder that servile adherence to an autocratic state is no guarantee of surviving its sins, especially when that state’s own survival is at stake. With the current global rise of right-wing extremism, militarized police suppressing student protests, and governmental attempts to reign in free speech, one wonders how far the world is from sinking into a similar abyss.
In 1942, the Nazi regime selected fifteen young women to be Adolf Hitler’s food tasters to guard against any poisoning of Der Fuehrer. This story was unknown until 2012 when one of the women, a regretful Margot Wölk, who was born in 1917, revealed it to a German newspaper. Brooks’ work eschews the reality of that tale, instead delivering a fevered — and often funny — parable, with Sarah Norris’s stylized direction, Joe McClean’s and Dane Bowman’s enigmatic lighting, and Ashlee Wasmund’s frenetic choreography all augmenting Brooks’ surreal concept.
Brooks buttresses her “past is prologue” premise with a time setting of “Then/Now,“ peppering the text with line readings one might hear on a cable news outlet. Brooks portrays the teenage tasters as flighty Gen Z-ers ensconced in a bunker beneath Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia — a sort of Mean Girls meet Mein Kampf motif. Our assumption, though, is that it is late in the war and things are not going well for the Fatherland — or is it the Motherland?
Saturated with at least a decade of Nazi propaganda, the girls’ commitment to the Third Reich remains steadfast. Hilda (Olivia Gill), her flowing blonde hair serving as an Aryan bonafide, is the most fervent, referring to Hitler as “our dear leader.” Anna (Ali Axelrad) is also loyal but is constantly at odds with Hilda, who questions her loyalty as well as Anna’s choice of friends. A pigtailed and bespectacled Liesel (Paige Simunovich) plays peacekeeper, alternating her support between Hilda and Anna while hiding her anxiety beneath a perky disposition. Margot (Caitlain Zambito) is a late arrival whose presence confirms the precarity of their situation and sets the otherwise calm Liesel on edge.
The four mug for smartphone selfies, dance to “Bitch, I’m Madonna” and other modern tracks, swoon over movie stars, and snipe at each other with petty insults followed by reconciling embraces. Like giggly bobbysoxers, they hilariously debate over whom they would rather sleep with, Sinatra or Hitler, and are agog at a potential visit by old Adolf himself.
While these actions may seem frivolous, they serve as diversions from the fearsome undertow within which the girls cohabit. They agonize that their next meal could well be their last, no matter how good the food tastes, and muse about what death would be like. They hint at the rumors about the fate of Europe’s Jews, even as one of them opines that such inklings cannot be true since the Reich “would never lie to us.” As they begin to question the “honor” of their work, they face a conundrum imperiling them all.
Written in 2019, Brooks’ work cleverly alludes to the MAGA and BLM movements, while the term “chosen people” offers an unsettling mixed message given the state of 2024’s geopolitics. The intimate performance space adds to the girls’ sense of confinement: Norris stages their eating scenes in a mechanical fashion or elsewhere portrays them holding their hands out in supplication as they await their food — images that epitomize their roles as commodities in the Nazi’s genocidal war machine.
The piece intentionally plays with the truth — still, it is hard to swallow a scenario in which one girl accuses another of being an informant yet so readily accepts the other’s denial and then they hug it all out. Still, the ensemble delivers stalwart performances, capably rendering young people on the cusp of adulthood who reluctantly must maneuver through a moral quagmire. Sound familiar?
Rogue Machine (Upstairs at the Henry Murray Stage in the Matrix Theatre), 7657 Melrose Ave, Hollywood. Fri. & Mon., 8 pm, Sat., 5 pm, Sun., 7 pm; thru June 3. https://www.roguemachinetheatre.org/ Running time 85 minutes with no intermission.
