The ARSONISTS / Brandstichter by Max Frisch performed by Downstage Left 11, 12, 13 July
Downstage Left returns to the Badhuistheater with Max Frisch's chillingly hilarious satire The Arsonists.
Details
Badhuistheater, Boerhaaveplein 28, 1091 AT, Amsterdam
Biedermann is a successful business owner, master of her house, and an upstanding citizen. (played by Peppy Mac Ruairi ) Just ask anyone, they'd all say so. But all that changes when she lets two suspicious strangers take up residency in her attic.Could they be the arsonsists who have been burning nearby towns to the ground? If so, what could they want from her house, conveniently situated in the middle of town? And, more importantly, what will she do about it?Written in the aftermath of the Second World War, Max Frisch's perenial satire of personal ethics and the weakness of respectability in the face of obvious evil has been brought up to date with a modern translation by Alistair Beaton.
Max Frisch's Play is a Theatre Parable , like all Great Drama.
The play itself is an extended metaphor about the weakness of personal ethics in the face of evil. Exactly what that evil is, Frisch never says.