Review: Leni's Last Lament

What could possibly be more reasonable than making common ground with the company you’re in? Aligning your personal view with your audience is a reasonable thing to do, right? But in theatre, we need conflict! What if we shifted the conflict a few feet from the stage into the guiding mind of the audience? That enough conflict for you?

Leni’s Last Lament presents controversial Nazi film-maker, Leni Riefenstahl, in eye-catching garb. Jodie Markell makes a pitch for our reason in cabaret kitsch: corset, leather boots, stockings, all topped with tousled blonde hair. Leni is an artist…and the case that we must always separate the art from the artist, well, this is the exception which most definitely proves the rule. Directed by Richard Caliban and written by Gil Kofman, Leni’s Last Lament is a study on overweening ambition at all costs. Even if that means making aesthetical hagiographic films for Hitler. She’s not in any way responsible for the content. After all, it is not Frau Riefenstahl uttering these words! And anyway, if it wasn’t her, it would be someone else. Aren’t you pleased a woman can hold the honoured position of framing the Führer?

This is an extraordinary hour in the presence of someone quite unpleasant - unfathomably good company, with her songs and her little vignettes - attempting to convince you that you would do the same had you found yourself in her position. Or are you special? Footage of her favourite subject is projected into a transfixed auditorium whereupon Leni teasingly suggests that there may just possibly have been a soupçon more than a professional relationship. It is an unsettling experience being toyed with. Her ego knows no bounds. She tauntingly asks “have you enjoyed the theatre?”, referring to the EdFringe programme. Had any of us felt obliged to give a standing ovation, belatedly rising and clapping without conviction, just because everyone else had? Yes, Hitler liked crowds. He could control them. There is a moment where Leni reaches into a bag and throws into the audience little red armbands. With swastikas on. The audience recoils in horror…hardly daring to touch the offensive present now sat in their laps.

Unrepentant to the last, Leni bursts into Valderi, Valdera and La Vie En Rose. It is an extraordinary performance by Markell which questions the trust we have in our collective selves. I’ll say it: it deserved a standing ovation…but who amongst us was brave enough? And for what would we have been giving on ovation? How might that have been framed?

Leni’s Last Lament runs until 25th August at Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh