The Investigation - TNT

Rather than directly exploring the events of the more recent genocide which tore their own country apart, Rwandan theatre company Urwintore has turned its attention to the Nazi holocaust of sixty years ago. This simplerestaging of Peter Weiss's 1965 verbatim documentary drama about the horrors which occurred in Auschwitz is an attempt to make some sort of sense of a world in which equally unimaginable atrocities can occur all over again.Speaking in French (with surtitles projected on screens flanking the virtually bare stage) the seven actors (playing both witnesses and defendants) make potent points about how human beings struggle to survive no matter what – even if, to enable them to do so, they are forced – or choose – to adopt a dubious moral code. The material (extracted from the Frankfurt War trials of the 60's) is, by now, only too familiar. But this 80 minute production still has the capacity to shock as the accused insist that obeying orders was ample justification for the acts of extermination and abuse which, again and again, they committed against their fellow human beings.
Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 (020-7922 2922). Until 10th November. Tickets £24.50 - £21.50, under 26's £9.50