Kirsten Grant
TELEGRAPH
Thu, 28 September 2023
The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria, at the Arcola - Will Alder
“I saved nearly 50,000 lives and you’ve never bloody heard of me,” Boris III laments in the opening moments of this surprising historical drama about the wartime monarch. The premise of Joseph Cullen and Sasha Wilson’s revisionist play is certainly an intriguing one. While the Second World War is a subject that is frequently theatrically revisited and rehashed, how many are in fact familiar with the story of Bulgaria’s king?
It also challenges binary narratives about the war that we in the West hold dear. While the real-life Boris sided with Hitler’s Germany to regain Bulgaria’s lost territories, he still managed to prevent the country’s Jewish communities from being sent to concentration camps. Described by Hitler as a “wily fox”, the king infuriated the Nazi leader in their final meeting by demanding that Bulgaria keep its Jewish population for hard labour. Two weeks later, Boris died in mysterious circumstances from suspected poisoning.
Out of the Forest’s galloping 80-minute production whips through these events at breakneck speed, and provides its own interpretation of them (a sympathetic Boris uses his road-building project as an excuse to save the Jews from deportation). Recently a sell-out hit at the Fringe and backed by Boris’s grandson Prince Cyril, the drama has been accused by some historians of “rewriting history” to perpetrate a myth about Bulgaria’s heroics.
In Hannah Hauer-King’s staging, Cullen plays Boris as a reluctant, decision-averse king who engages in a cat-and-mouse game with Hitler to avoid imposing restrictions against his Jewish citizens. Initially, his dithering is played for laughs but, when he is literally backed into a corner by the rest of the five-strong ensemble and forced to strip Jewish Bulgarians of their citizenship, he morphs into a tortured figure who repeatedly asks audience members: “What would you do?” It’s a thought-provoking performance that is somewhat undercut by the antic caricatures of the anti-Semitic figures around him, which aim to be satirical but end up feeling tonally jarring.
This production tries to address the complexities of Bulgaria’s history as much as it can in its short runtime. We are introduced to key players such as Liliana Panitsa, the secretary to the Commissar for Jewish Affairs, who bravely warned Jewish communities about deportation plans. And nor does the script shy away from the hard-hitting reality that 11,000 Jews from the regained Bulgarian territories were, in fact, sent to concentration camps.
The writers have clearly done their homework, but overpacking this drama with fun – yet unnecessary – historical facts does it no favours and puts you in mind of a Horrible Histories special, while clumsy asides to the audience are used to shoehorn in extra details. Still, this is an ambitious and inventive outing for a fledgling company.
FRINGE
Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria review – a monarch’s missing morals
Wittily drawn historical drama follows self-effacing leader ill-equipped to deal with the encroaching Nazi menace
Mark Fisher
THE GUARDIAN
Thu 3 Aug 2023
If you think actor Joseph Cullen is cartoonish at the start of this chewy true-life story, you should see the grotesque caricature he becomes. Playing Bulgaria’s wartime king, he is so self-effacing he looks about to crumple down the middle. He is placatory and feeble, the Beano’s Walter the Softy made flesh.
The joke in Hannah Hauer-King’s production, written by Cullen and Sasha Wilson, is that nobody in this neglected Balkan country can take themselves seriously. The five-strong ensemble josh their way through silly accents and meta-gags as they send up a nation that knows it will never be a player on the world stage and is too laidback to care. The king is in good company.
Snappily written, wittily performed and brightly coloured by a live score that encompasses not just Slavic folk but also campfire gospel and protest song, it has a brisk knockabout charm.
But it also has a more serious purpose. Cullen plays Boris III, who ruled Bulgaria from 1918 to his suspicious death in 1943, as a reluctant monarch, averse to responsibility. But as Hitler’s Germany extends its territory, it becomes ever less possible for him to stay on the fence. A pact with the Nazis puts the fate of 50,000 Jews in his hands. “Service requires action,” he is reminded, as the comic evasions of the beginning become cruel moral choices.
Playing a game of double bluff – or is he? – the king morphs into a nasty parody of antisemitism, eating himself up with the inhumanity of it all. And as the movement of Out of the Forest theatre’s production goes from frivolous to ferocious, so the play makes us confront those awkward questions about appeasement and compromise, and the slippery line between honourable neutrality and collaboration. For all its fun and games, it is a play with a sting.
At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 28 August
All our Edinburgh festival reviews
Thu 3 Aug 2023
Awkward questions to answer … The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III,
King of Bulgaria.
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/the Guardian
If you think actor Joseph Cullen is cartoonish at the start of this chewy true-life story, you should see the grotesque caricature he becomes. Playing Bulgaria’s wartime king, he is so self-effacing he looks about to crumple down the middle. He is placatory and feeble, the Beano’s Walter the Softy made flesh.
The joke in Hannah Hauer-King’s production, written by Cullen and Sasha Wilson, is that nobody in this neglected Balkan country can take themselves seriously. The five-strong ensemble josh their way through silly accents and meta-gags as they send up a nation that knows it will never be a player on the world stage and is too laidback to care. The king is in good company.
Snappily written, wittily performed and brightly coloured by a live score that encompasses not just Slavic folk but also campfire gospel and protest song, it has a brisk knockabout charm.
But it also has a more serious purpose. Cullen plays Boris III, who ruled Bulgaria from 1918 to his suspicious death in 1943, as a reluctant monarch, averse to responsibility. But as Hitler’s Germany extends its territory, it becomes ever less possible for him to stay on the fence. A pact with the Nazis puts the fate of 50,000 Jews in his hands. “Service requires action,” he is reminded, as the comic evasions of the beginning become cruel moral choices.
Playing a game of double bluff – or is he? – the king morphs into a nasty parody of antisemitism, eating himself up with the inhumanity of it all. And as the movement of Out of the Forest theatre’s production goes from frivolous to ferocious, so the play makes us confront those awkward questions about appeasement and compromise, and the slippery line between honourable neutrality and collaboration. For all its fun and games, it is a play with a sting.
At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 28 August
All our Edinburgh festival reviews
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