The action is tragic; the dialogue frequently grisly-comic. The title of Josh Azouz’s new play tips its hat to Once Upon a Time in America/in Hollywood. The design nods at Beckett. Max Johns’s plywood set, over which a sun hangs like a garish tambourine, features a Godot-like single plant, first a cactus (which has horrible significance) and later an orange tree. In Happy Days mode, a head pokes up from the plywood, the body buried, the mouth working overtime.
Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia sets out to shock and to lure by unexpected contrast, delivering a dark, second world war episode in bright language. Tunisia in 1943 is run by the Nazis. Jewish men are being set to work in labour camps. Muslim Arabs are being tempted to collaborate with the occupiers by the promise of throwing off their French colonial past. The state of Israel does not yet exist: “Palestine: remind me where that is again.”
The facts of this little-known historical situation, seen through the prism of the shifting alliances between a Muslim and a Jewish couple, are fascinating. Yet Azouz’s script and Eleanor Rhode’s production are sometimes so stiff with humorous intention and so laden with exposition that the action can scarcely get across the stage.
Laura Hanna is lively in the part of a betrayed woman. As a Nazi officer – nicknamed Grandma because he likes to knit – Adrian Edmondson is a sinisterly radiant presence. He prowls around beaming in shorts, like a predatory scout master; trapped in a cellar, he pops up like a leering jack-in-the-box. There are sharp moments: “I love what they are doing to the bread,” exclaims a prisoner, as his torturer, once a friend, stuffs food into him. Yet the intent is too evident, the pace too slow for absurdity to seem natural. To be frightening the drama needs to be funnier. To be funnier it needs to be more frightening.
Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied Tunisia is at the Almeida, London, until 18 September
