Entertainment
Adorable teen actor can’t save the gimmicky ‘Camp Siegfried’, set at a Nazi retreat in New York
NEW YORK — Nothing seems out of the ordinary at Camp Siegfried for the first few minutes. A 17-year-old boy rocks a shy 16-year-old girl at an outdoor party. She holds a mug of beer while an oompah band plays. It’s kind of a summer cabin camp on Long Island, she’s from Baltimore with her aunt, he’s been there with her parents and brothers and been coming for years. After a little flirtation, he says he’s staying in one of the tents, and she says she’s not far down Hitler Street. It is 1938 and these children of German origin are transformed into young fascists by the German-American Bund.
The frame is real. The New York Times covered the noisy gatherings and discord between the residents of Yaphank (about an hour’s drive from New York with good traffic) and the sieg heil-ing group during the camps’ actual existence from 1936 to 1941. When the war ended, the place was essentially out of memory. Over the years, historians have reminded anyone who would listen that an idyllic haven for Nazi sympathizers (and visiting Nazis) flourished in Suffolk County, New York. To use the example of the New York Times, the newspaper published a big Hey, can you believe this is real? article in 1977 and once again in 1984.
But when playwright Jess Wohl (who has a Jewish husband and is raising her children in the Jewish faith) took a short vacation to the area two years ago, she was surprised by what she learned. The streets no longer bear the names of top Nazis, although the heavily German area has replaced them with other Teutonic titles. (Bach Court meets Schiller Court, not far from German Boulevard.)
Its certainly fertile soil for a writer. And Camp Siegfried, who debuted at the Old Vic in London last year before coming to the 300-seat Tony Kiser Theater in Second step in New York, does a lot of interesting things. That’s part of the problem with this 85-minute two-handed match. You sit there in the audience and you think, Ah, I see what the author is doing here, it’s very clever. And while that engenders some respect, it’s also the kiss of death for drama.
Most of the play has almost no direct reference to Nazism. They are hormonal children, and we watch the power dynamics exchange between them as their flirtation becomes more physical. At first, the boy (we never learn names) seems confident, but over time we see he doubts himself compared to his bigger, fitter, more accomplished brothers. She presents herself, at first, as what 10 years ago we call adorkable pretty and sweet, but clumsy. Soon we discover that she has a lot more sexual experience than you might think (and somewhere between traumatized and emboldened by it), and the story takes an unexpected detour into moments of, shall we say, intimacy. unusual.
What’s critical is that while the two may banter Nazi propaganda (a careful read about Gtterdmmerung, a vague conversation about the looming fight), they’re just repeating what they hear at the camp. It’s not really what they think. What keeps them busy, understandably, is typical dating stuff: which girls do what with which boys, and what their future would be if they got pregnant. For their part, the camp elders who exhaust the children with marches and physical labor are surprisingly tolerant of premarital mating. The number of buildings is one of the ambiguous goals of the whole company.
But for the duration of the shows, we know a punchline has to happen. We see our star studying her German, as she is in the running for a position as keynote speaker for the end of summer rally. Naturally, she understands, and a light switch puts her on stage in front of a large crowd, shouting in German like Charlie Chaplin’s great dictator about the Juden, a subject we’ve never seen her give an opinion on. all summer.
It’s scary, sure, but it comes with a lot less punch than it should. I understand, it’s the atmosphere I felt in the audience. And the phrase I’m sure America can be strong again is a bit too cutesy. Guess you can never be too outspoken when fighting fascism, it just felt like one of those old live TV applause signs was going to flash during that little barb.
Director David Cromer makes terrific use of a creative set, essentially a mound of grass that allows for X, Y, and Z axis action, along with plenty of intriguing activities, like splitting wood with an axe. (I’m afraid at some point during this production a flea will fly into someone’s face in this little theater.) Johnny Berchtold is strong as a male lead, but I have to take a moment to discussing the work of Lily McInerny, about whom I can’t wait to say, Ah, I saw her in an off-Broadway production as she’s a hit five to ten years from now.
McInerny, whose credits are few, is one of those explosive individuals who exude charisma and intelligence. Less than five minutes into this show, it was evident that she was an extraordinarily gifted performer, and the natural reaction from the audience is to want to engage with her. This adds, at times, a counter-intuitive element to the overall game. To put it bluntly, she’s so funny that she makes herself laugh for moments that I don’t think are made for laughs. Not that the audience was making fun of her or the work, it’s just that she’s so damn likeable that a mere facial expression or a trailing syllable runs through the auditorium. I guess many shows dream of having such issues.
As for an evening of theatre, I hesitate to recommend Camp Siegfried to one of the so-called bridges and tunnels crowds. Not out of elitism, but, despite the heavy origin of the stories, it’s very light work, and viewers may wonder why they’ve come all the way from Jersey to see this. It’s over quickly and, let’s face it, it’s mostly about two teenagers yapping about their love lives. That they seem so normal but are actually incomplete Nazis should be intellectually stimulating, but in reality, it just ends up looking like a gimmick.
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