“The lights are going out all over Europe—we will not see them lit again in our lifetime,” British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey ominously reflected concerning the commencement of the First World War. Grey’s image-laden prophesy provides the basis of Theatre Sündenfall’s latest opus, “The Lights are going out all over Europe: A Danse Macabre,” a play that recounts the crisis of 1914 in Europe that led to the outbreak of the First World War.
“The Lights” began showing in Munich in 2004 to commemorate the 90th Anniversary of World War I and premiered February at the District’s German Historical Institute. The production was given on the Institute’s small, intimate stage. Through historical education, the play aims to highlight the work that is required to maintain the unified and peaceful Europe of today. In this respect “The Lights” is a triumph, a moving piece that proves that even in the most inhuman conditions, glimpses of humanity can be seen.
The play focuses on the leaders of the major powers of Europe and their decisions that ultimately led to the outbreak of war. The actors portray these leaders as generally incompetent men desperately trying to project an image of power and competency. Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, is depicted as having very little knowledge of foreign affairs; Emperor of Austria-Hungary Franz Joseph I is a slave to senility, often falling asleep and repeating himself; French President Raymond Poincaré has a special weakness for champagne. It seems nobody has control of the situation.
The actors’ frequent employment of French, Russian, German and English dialogue lends the play a sense of realism that a monolingual script would have lacked. Wilhelm II’s true obstinacy and short temper couldn’t be expressed in any language other than German. Luckily, English subtitles appear on a screen for those who have not mastered all four languages.
The play’s moments of comic relief often rely on the use of foreign languages. Emperor Nikolaus II’s outbursts in Russian are unintelligible and hilarious, and Afred von Schlieffen’s inebriated discourse on his Schlieffen Plan features some of the most imprecise and befuddled German I’ve ever heard.
Four of the five actors in the production play multiple characters, often portraying rulers in one scene and soldiers in the next. Once the viewer is able to get past an initial degree of confusion, it becomes apparent that the quick role changes underscore one of the central ideas of the play—men in power are human just like the soldiers and civilians, and they are just as susceptible to making mistakes. This theme is especially lucid when the leaders Poincaré, Nikolaus II, Wilhelm II, and Grey simultaneously take off their jackets to reveal blood-stained shirts, signifying their transformation into soldiers.
Despite the multi-lingual dialogue and abrupt role changes, the theme of the play is not lost in translation: human beings are predisposed toward solidarity and kindness, not war, even in the most adverse of conditions. A German soldier tells the audience a story about merciful French soldiers who yelled out warnings that explosives were about to go off in the German trench. Sure enough, the trench exploded, but not before the German soldiers were able to escape, owing their survival to the very men they were supposed to be fighting.
Later on, a soldier recounts his experience on Christmas Day 1914, a day when German and French soldiers dropped their weapons to share food, wine and cigarettes with each other, their acts of kindness transcending the language barrier. This scene, the most poignant of the play, encapsulates what makes “The Lights are going out all over Europe” so great—its ability to find optimism in the midst of pessimism, humanity in the midst of inhumanity.
The German Historical Institue is located on 1607 New Hampshire Ave., N.W. Just take the G2 bus to the DuPont Circle stop, get off and walk four blocks northeast up New Hampshire Ave.
