by Mark Hayhurst
seen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 12 February 2015
This play, transferred to London from Chichester, concerns the attempts of Irmgard Litten (Penelope Wilton) to obtain the release of her lawyer son Hans (Martin Hutson) from 'protective custody' - that is, effective imprisonment - in various German concentration camps from 1933 until his suicide in Dachau in 1937. Hans Litten had earlier (in 1931) issued a sub-poena to Adolf Hitler to appear in a trial of four Brownshirts (members of the SA), a humiliation not forgotten when the Nazis came to power. (The play is based on Irmgard Litten's own memoirs.)
