Hans Litten: The Jew Who Cross-Examined Hitler Review.
7 / 10
It’s a somewhat baffling choice that the trial takes up only about twenty minutes of a play that runs two hours (including intermission.) The playwright, who is also a professor of philosophy, fills the rest of the play with biographical scenes, philosophical and political debates, some dozen songs and poems from the period, and lots of scenes of post-trial Hans in prison and concentration camps, during which he shows up for visits by his mother exhibiting the latest injuries from his various tortures (These were early iterations of the camps, but did they really allow family visits?) All of this material outside of the trial might have worked better if it were presented with more subtlety and subtext. For all the playwright’s effort at indicating Hans’ “inner life” (as he informs us in a program note), Lackey’s writing is too often on the level of a school play, all spelled out and on the surface.
