It is tempting to take the coward’s way out and summarise Daniel Mawson’s Gideon: a play with music as a biography of composer Gideon Klein staged in an imaginative manner with live music and so dodge analysing the many ideas running through the play.
Gideon Klein (Max Gallagher) is a composer in the late 1930s, but, as a Moravian Jew, finds his vocation interrupted by the rise of the Nazi regime. As Jewish people are not allowed to perform in public, Klein is forced to play as a concert pianist under pseudonyms. But he is unable to avoid the restrictions of the regime, loses a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London and is ultimately transported to concentration camps. Even under such adverse conditions, Klein follows his muse and continues to compose.
Daniel Mawson’s script concentrates on conveying information and ideas rather than developing drama. The opening is a breathless rush of dates and events which creates a sense of inevitability. The plethora helps convince that the average person would be unable to oppose the relentless rise of the Nazi regime, but the sheer amount of data is hard for an audience to absorb. The dialogue, inevitably, tends to be expositional. Rebecca Scroggs and Alastair Michael take on a number of roles, so when a character refers to her medical practice, it serves to clarify that the actor in question is playing Klein’s girlfriend, not his mother.
The concepts contained in the play are likewise crowded and sometimes contradictory. There are so many ideas, if you concentrate too long on one, you risk missing the next. Klein’s dogged insistence on continuing to compose and teach music illustrates that creating art under adverse conditions is an act of defiance against a repressive regime. Yet Klein was imprisoned in Terezín concentration camp, which the Nazis used as a propaganda vehicle to convince outside agencies like the Red Cross the camps were humane accommodation rather than slaughterhouses. Klein’s actions could, therefore, also be interpreted as a Wodehouse-like unintentional form of collaboration.
The choices faced by the Jewish people are inevitably bargains with the Devil—facilitating the requirements of the occupying forces and coming to a sticky end in any case. Truth during wartime is subjective; reports of victories by the allies and resistance forces are distorted by the Nazi propaganda process into acts of terrorism. There is the occasional hint of grim humour. Klein’s composition for a string quartet has to be rewritten for a trio when one of the players is transported.
Klein is also shown as a contradictory figure. Rather than a tormented artist whose life is dominated by the need to satisfy his muse, Max Gallagher’s smiling, self-satisfied Klein is, initially at least, a bit of a dilettante. Gallagher’s Klein is obsessed with his appearance, having an extensive wardrobe, and seems happy to listen to the works of other composers rather than develop his own. Yet Klein is defined by his compositions, many recovered after his death, rather than his personality, which is hardly attractive—he shows little interest in, or concern for, his girlfriend.
Director Sue Dunderdale sets an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty. The stage is dotted with abandoned suitcases setting a sense of constant transition. Pieces of broken musical instruments litter the stage and, in a nice touch, a legless piano is used as a performance platform.
The most striking aspect of the play is that it is supported by music played live by Klezmer Klassica Ensemble (Elana Kenyon-Gewirtz on violin, Chris Emerson on viola, Caroline Morris on cello and Tomek Pieczora on piano). My knowledge of classic music is poor, but as Klein was influenced by Janáček, one assumes his music is featured as well as Klein’s.
The music by the Ensemble does not comment upon the action in the play—developments are not underscored by dramatic chords. There is the occasional snatch of jazz to indicate the year when events are taking place, but in the main, the music is used to enhance the desolate mood of creeping despair.
Gideon: a play with music is an educative piece—intended to pass on information rather than be dramatically satisfying. It is better to have too many ideas than too few, but the play might benefit from an interval and longer running time to allow the ideas to emerge in a more natural, less forced manner.