The Times, 30 April 1990, by Jeremy Kingston.
"Tragedy also comes to the working classes"
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Maria Magdalena. Gate Theatre 

Until the middle of the last century, tragic heroes were 
drawn exclusively from the upper classes. Common people 
might be allowed an appearance, but only if they brought a 
basket of asps along with them, or bad news from another 
part of the palace. 

Two German playwrights were the first to challenge the 
notion that tragic events came only to those of gentle 
birth. Buchner's "Woyzeck," though written in the 1830s, 
remained unknown until the end of the century, so that 
Friedrich Hebbel's "Maria Magdalena," written and produced 
10 years later, became the first performed play in which 
griefs are experienced by a commoner. 

The victim is Klara, daughter of a joiner in a small German 
town. In a cast that includes a merchant and two bailiffs, 
the villain is a cashier who persuades Klara to give him the 
final proof of her love, and the hero a young lawyer, the 
childhood sweetheart whom she never expected to meet again. 

The joiner's parlour is a long way from a throne-room, but 
Death's blade sweeps through both. When Klara's brother is 
arrested on suspicion of stealing jewels, the mother drops 
down dead on the spot. Fearful of her father's wrath, Klara 
dare not tell him she is pregnant, and while lawyer and 
cashier shoot it out, she throws herself down a well. 

This production, apparently the first in English, is by 
Theatre Manoeuvres, a relaunch of plc Theatre Company, which 
staged a spare, imaginatively updated "Don Carlos" two years 
ago. Their Hebbel is also transposed to a time and place 
that seem at first to be excessively far from the original: 
instead of provincial Germany, a town in America's Mid-West 
some time in the 1950s. 

It is a place where the fear of hellfire is still powerful, 
and abortion is as unthinkable to the pony-tailed Klara as 
to her 1844 predecessor. But though the strength and 
acuteness is retained in her scenes with the young men and 
with the sickly mother (excellently played by Marie 
Stillin), the ascent into tragedy keeps slipping back into 
bathos. 

Laura Eddy's anxious urchin face and clenched hands are 
altogether persuasive early on, but when the character 
dawdles under a roof, hoping to be killed by a falling slate 
and tells us so in a soliloquy it is hard to believe that 
these are likely tricks of a member of the Debbie Reynolds 
generation. 

Until the last scene defeats everyone, Malcolm Edwards draws 
fine, realistic performances from the women, from Robert 
Bowman (sharp, finger-flicking rotter), and from Alexis 
Denisof as the neat, considerate, fresh-cheeked chap Klara 
should have married. Robert Jezek brings too little weight 
to the religious father. 

It would be hard to imagine a heroine further from today's 
feminist ideal, and yet, despite or because of that, the 
play is continually fascinating. It desperately needs an 
interval, however, and since the two acts are each 55 
minutes long, I cannot imagine why we are not given one. 



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