Review: "My Friend, Hitler"

whitney smith

August 23, 2008 by whitney smith

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Bathed in red light, the familiar figure with the bad haircut and Swastika armband recoiled in horror, while describing an execution by firing squad:

One by one, 280 blindfolded soldiers had lurched back, blood gushing from their mouths as they collapsed into shallow graves.

But it wasn't long before Adolf Hitler would recover. After all, he had ordered the executions of his friend, Ernest Roehm, and Roehm's Nazi paramilitary group, despite the fact that they had helped orchestrate Hitler's rise to power as chancellor of Germany.

Even six decades after Hitler's reign of terror, the German dictator's betrayal of even his most loyal comrades is still scary.

Actor Zehra Fazal makes that clear at the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival, where she made her debut Friday with the 40-minute play, "My Friend Hitler."

That's right, we said her.

Fazal, a West Lafayette native, is a graduate of Wellesley College, where she nurtured interests in theater and Japanese culture. There, she discovered "My Friend Hitler," a little-known work by a well-known writer.

"My Friend Hitler" captures an up-close-and-personal view of the dictator, seen through the eyes of his friend, Roehm, at a pivotal moment in Hitler's rise to the German presidency in the 1930s. Roehm's storm troopers, once so helpful to Hitler, had become a political liability because the regular German army resented them. So Hitler had to do something.

At IndyFringe, "My Friend Hitler" races by quickly. The text is densely packed with detail, and even with the historical background provided in the program, references in the play can get confusing. The show assumes a certain familiarity with pre-World War II political and military developments.

Still, "My Friend Hitler" is one powerful show, and the power is not mitigated by the fact that Fazal is female. Her lyrical contralto may not duplicate Hitler's guttural baritone, but that didn't really matter. Nor did her physical presence on stage diminish what might be considered Hitler's most masculine qualities, such as his strength, ruthlessness and lust for power.

Beyond that, Fazal's particular portrayal enhanced playwright Yukio Mishima's goal of unveiling the private Hitler, sipping a cocktail in the chancellor's office, or having chats with unseen friends about the weather or sleepless nights.

All in all, "My Friend Hitler" offers a scary glimpse of someone you're not entirely sure you want to see up close. The more you know him, the less you want to.

Posted in groups: IndyFringe

Forum: Talk

Tags: 

Culture, theatre, things to do, Theatre on the square, 'My Friend Hitler, " Adolf Hitler

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