'Democracy': The Meltdown Of a Conflicted Cold War Spy
By Nelson Pressley
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The political and psychological divisions are monumental in "Democracy," Michael Frayn's absorbing study of early-'70s West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and the spy who brought him to ruin.
Designer James Kronzer vividly creates the picture in the Olney Theatre Center's lively production with his soaring, elegant split set -- the classic old stone construction of the West on one side, the drab Iron Curtain concrete and fluorescent light on the other. In the middle is a polished floor, the political stage where Frayn's diplomatic and emotional drama gets played out.
For "Democracy" is not just a spy story chronicling a key Cold War moment, replete with hardball jostling as ambitions are nurtured and dashed. It's also an intriguing, almost touching study of personal loyalty and the intangibles of attraction to a flawed political star.
In "Democracy," Brandt is that star, a charismatic leader with what many of his colleagues jealously refer to as "clean hands," free of Nazi taint. (Brandt spent the Nazi years in Norway and Sweden.) Brandt took steps to repair Europe's bitter postwar fissures, but as the play unfolds, a key question keeps the figures on both sides perpetually unsettled: Can we trust them?
That's much of what East German spy Gunter Guillaume is to divine as he works his way up the apparatus of Brandt's government, eventually landing as the chancellor's right-hand man. In Jim Petosa's acute staging, costume designer Pei Lee puts the characters in dark business suits while Arno Kretschmann -- the East German spymaster who gives Guillaume his orders -- wears cloudy gray, right down to his shoes. He's a shadow, a rumor -- there, and not there.
So suspicion and paranoia are as present as the weather. Yet as Guillaume binds himself to Brandt, he also lets down his guard, falls for him -- and not just a little. As Guillaume, Jeffries Thaiss is like a schoolboy, first obsequious and eager to please, and ultimately in thrall, even as he blithely keeps passing secrets eastward.
On the one hand, Thaiss's juvenile take seems too unseasoned for a clever double agent at the top echelons of a national government. Yet the raw, almost naive feeling Thaiss brings to the part seems grounded in Frayn's tale, which is so fueled by psychological ambiguity that Brandt, this galvanizing leader/serial womanizer, quotes Walt Whitman: "I contain multitudes." Thaiss's almost adolescent fervor repeated from above not only highlights an unusual kinship with Brandt, but also hints at a larger angst in Germany's disjointed soul.
As Brandt, Andrew Long projects an easy command of backrooms and vast crowds, giving the kind of relaxed yet powerful performance that politicians are coached toward yet seldom master. But Long's characterization is also limned with a fundamental loneliness -- an Achilles' heel that allows Guillaume in.
Petosa guides the rest of the masculine cast toward a potent blend of political machismo -- everyone simmers with ambition or defensiveness -- and dull bureaucratic obsessiveness. Hugh Nees makes a particularly strong impression as Herbert Wehner, a savvy but unliked player, and James Konicek delivers a dour turn as an inept security head.
As Kretschmann, James Slaughter dryly prowls the margins, guiding Guillaume from the shadows (Daniel MacLean Wagner's lighting design deftly aids a narrative style that leans heavily on narration and asides). Oddly, sound is the only weak link; why such well-trained actors in the Olney's sleek, two-year-old Mainstage need microphones pinned to their ties is a mystery.
Frayn's vision might bristle with realpolitik, but it also depends on what the occasional over-amplification disrupts: intimacy and uncertainty, the nagging tug of doubt.
