Speer by Esther Vilar, Almeida Theatre, Followed By Dinner At Granita, 6 March 1999

I wrote but one word in my log for this one:

Excellent

It was creepy, though.

The play is set some decades after the war, with Albert Speer somewhat rehabilitated as someone ancillary to the Nazi atrocity machine, despite his Nuremberg conviction. This play was about the unravelling of that more favourable image. David Edgar also wrote a play on this subject which was produced the following year, but this Esther Vilar one was the only one of the two we saw.

Here’s the Theatricalia entry for that production.

Excellent performances from Klaus Maria Brandauer and Sven Eric Bechtolf.

We saw a preview. Subsequently, mixed reviews abounded (mostly good) for this production. Here’s Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard:

Speer Standard de Jongh 10 Mar 1999, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Michael Billington, on the other hand, found the debate “rigged”.

Speer, Guardian Billington 10 Mar 1999, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Charles Spencer in the Telegraph was impressed:

Speer Spencer Telegraph 11 Mar 1999, Thu The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

My records show that we ate at Granita after this play, as was our habit on occasion when visiting the Almeida back then.