In a featureless stone dungeon on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, Mrs Stern (Ella Kaille) is processed into custody by young German policeman Karl (Brett Temple). Until recently a criminal police officer, this is his first arrest following promotion into the new political police force. Now, in 1933, he has many new people to arrest.
Mrs Stern is educated and respectable, yet under emerging Nazi rule these qualities don’t place a Jewish woman above suspicion. A librarian at the Prussian State Library has informed on her, and now Karl believes she’s been collecting antisemitic newspaper cartoons to send to ‘Zionist’ organisations abroad. Offered counsel by lawyer Erich (Drew Hirshfield), who’s known to be connected to these organisations, accepting might feel like an admission of guilt in a world where due process no longer applies.
That Mrs Stern’s real-life connection to history isn’t mentioned in text around writer Jenny Lyn Bader’s play feels like reason not to spoiler it here. Ari Laura Kreith directs beautifully, and Mrs Stern is played with elegance and intellectual charm by Kaille, contrasting with the business-like but conflicted sense of justice which Temple brings to Karl.
Yet for all that the piece covers its core ground well, about whether love and empathy can still exist in a totalitarian state, there’s a certain lightness around the real evil Mrs Stern finds herself swept up in. As its envoy, Karl is just too nice from the start.
Mrs Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, Traverse Theatre, until 30 Aug (not 10, 17, 24), various times