Review: BIG BROTHER BLITZKRIEG, King's Head Theatre, January 15 2016

Adolf Hitler, twentysomething, a failed art student and ex-WWI corporal, wakes up, not in Vienna as he might expect, but in the Big Brother House, another freak in a 2016 reality TV freakshow. After a few words from Big Brother himself, Adolf quickly sizes up the job and takes a leadership role, hectoring housemates, failing to keep a sense of perspective with the tasks and antagonising everyone. He does however, do the equivalent of keeping the trains running on time, by getting things done and energising a bored (and boring) group.

Huw Rous Eyre and Max Elton's Big Brother Blitzkrieg (at the King's Head Theatre until 30 January) takes a very interesting idea (one that I trust came up over some late night booze watching Channel 5) and pushes it for dark comic effect. The first half is a little slow with too much caricaturing of characters who don't really need it (we've all seen the drama queen, the dim rapper, the earnest housewife, the Katie Hopkins wannabe, the earnest gender-bender warrior) but, just when I felt the urge to look at my watch, things got interesting.

Adolf, having been expelled for abusing Rachel, is returned to the house and changes tack to use a mix of deception and manipulation to get housemates onside as he continues to persecute Rachel (Jewish, of course). Such techniques mirror those used in the Nazis' rise - Hitler was voted into power lest we forget - with mentions of Goebbels' propaganda machine, the "stab in the back" and Lebensraum to underline the point. The Big Brother House as Weimar Germany is a conceit that works really well.

The cast have a lot of fun. Stephen Chance is creepily charismatic as Hitler: ridiculous, but an alpha male who gives housemates who lack self-esteem the words they need to feel better about themselves, his followers neither mad nor bloodthirsty, just weak. Tracey Ann Wood's Rachel is the decent everywoman, initially exasperated, then wary, then fearful as she is expelled from the House. There are some handy comic turns from Hannah Douglas, Jenny Johns, Kit Lloyd and Neil Summerville, but they aren't really given enough to do as the story focuses on Adolf and Rachel, with the other housemates illuminating their schism.

Ultimately, this play doesn't quite deliver the volume of laughs required of a full-on comedy and doesn't quite explore the full potential of painstakingly recreating the Nazi state in the Big Brother House - but it is diverting and original in much that it does. And, in its message about how even a bunch of misfits can be corralled into the uniform of a fascist paramilitary, the warning from history is driven home.