The lunatics take over in a film that brings a hitherto-lost contemporary satire on the madness of the Nazis to present-day audiences

Conditions in the concentration camp Terezin (German Theresienstadt), near Prague, designed by the Nazis to hold Jews en route to the death camps, were harsh enough to ensure many died right there. Yet its name also evokes the extraordinary flowering of artistic life the prisoners shared in defiance of their oppressors. Famously in 1944, the Nazis cynically exploited that flowering to convince Red Cross inspectors that Terezin was a ‘model village’ for the Jews. That same year, young Czech playwright Karel Švenk and a group of fellow inmates planned to stage a satire lampooning the Nazis, so blatant that it never got beyond the dress rehearsal. The Council of Jewish elders, charged with keeping order in the camp, banned it outright. By 1945, Švenk and most of the players had perished in the Holocaust.

It’s comparatively recently that American academic and writer Naomi Patz reconstructed and reimagined this satire, The Last Cyclist, first successfully staging it in New York in 2013 (with a separate UK production premiering at Brundibar Arts Festival, as featured in the Jan 2020 issue of JR), then making it into a film. In the theatre, the audience is cast as the audience of Terezin inmates at that dress rehearsal. The film is shot with a live crowd, but watching online at home, you too become part of it.

From the get-go Patz ‘s film captures the defiant spirit, as an inmate holding a comb under his nose caricatures Hitler haranguing a crowd and acts out the dark joke that provides the premise for the satire…

Hitler: “My fellow citizens, the country is in crisis… Who is to blame for all our troubles? The Jews!”
Man in crowd: “And the cyclists!”
Hitler (exasperated): “Why the cyclists?”
Man: “Why the Jews?”

To composer Stephen Feigenbaum’s plangent score, the actors seamlessly establish the playing style, conjuring the next scene with a ‘handwritten’ Brechtian placard: ‘Garden of a Mental Institution’. Whiteface clownish makeup and white pyjama-like garb help to designate the inmates of the asylum. Although the acting and movement style are exaggerated in keeping with the stark satire, it is subtly calibrated. When the action moves to the shop of our engaging hero Abeles (‘played’ by Švenk, aka wonderfully appealing actor Patrick Pizzolorusso) and a tryst with his sweetheart Mánička (Alyson Rosenfeld), they’re that tad more naturalistic in dress and playing style.

But back to the lunatics, who soon take over the asylum, then the world. Led by towering, wild-haired Ambrose Martos and volatile Kirsten Hopkins, they turn against the bike-riding physician (Timur Kocak), who infantilises them; then against all cyclists. They escape, only to be exploited by Jenny Lee Mitchell’s wonderfully scary female Führer, Ma’am. Striding the stage in Gestapo-like greatcoat and fur hat, she dominates the action, inciting the lunatics to blame generations of cyclists for society’s ills. Cycles are commandeered, their riders and anyone suspected of colluding with cyclists rounded up (including our hero Abeles) and sentenced to confinement on ‘Horror Island’.

Even a dark satire might have a happy ending, but a reality check leaves no doubt that transport lists wait for 1944’s cast and audience. Finally, our 21st-century company remove their caps and name-check their Terezin incarnations in an extraordinarily poignant ending to this important and moving drama. Hats off to the 11-strong company, to Patz and to director Edward Einhorn for ensuring Švenk and his fable reach a wider audience at last.

By Judi Herman

The Last Cyclist is available to stream Friday 4 – Thursday 10 December (links available for 24 hours once started). $11. ONLINE. https://watch.eventive.org/chainfilmfest2020/play/5fa64072a2315100628f2cdf