Erik Khan’s play Canned Goods imagines a version of the notorious Gleiwitz incident of 1939 in which a squad of Germans pretending to be Polish soldiers raided a German radio station to give Hitler an excuse to invade Poland. They added to the fake raid by dressing German prisoners in Polish uniforms and leaving their murdered bodies nearby. These prisoners are the canned goods in an operation named ‘Grandmother Died’.
Most of the performance is spent in the company of the three minimally sketched prisoners, whom SS Major Alfred Naujocks ensures are well-fed and treated carefully by the guard (Joe Mallalieu), who rarely does much more than snarl.
Honick (Tom Wells), a catholic farmer, is the first we meet. He has no idea why he is detained and spends a good deal of time asking questions. The Jewish prisoner Bimbaum (Charlie Archer), brought from the Dachau concentration camp, is a teacher quoting philosophers and speaking about the persecution of Jewish people. The prisoner Kruger (Rowan Polonski), also from Dachau, illustrates some of that racism, offering to help the Germans in whatever way they want, to redeem himself from his criminal conviction.
There are touches of expressionism to the well-directed production from the moment we enter the auditorium to find the imposing, black-uniformed figure of Naujocks (Dan Parr) relaxing in a seat on the slightly raised performance platform. The lighting by Ryan Joseph Stafford gives a sinister feel to many of the scenes, and no more so than when Tom Wells suddenly emerges from a moment of darkness to become Adolf Hitler wearing a swastika standing at a mike, his voice being amplified to sound like one of those terrifying speeches the actual Hitler made.
However, beyond the expressionist flavour of the production, there is little characterisation, plot or dramatic tension to hold our attention. We know what is going to happen, and the only surprise is the revelation at the end that the murderer Naujocks spent only a few years in prison for his crimes.