Exhibitionism

Like the Mountains

Adapted by Hans Frank from a screenplay by Don Craven, Like The Mountains follows the divergent paths of two brothers as they do their best to survive the turbulence of post-World War II Berlin and its subsequent division into East and West. Siblings, friends, potential business partners, as well as rivals in love, Erich and Josef eke out a life, just as thousands of other families did in the difficult years leading up to and during the Cold War. When Erich, a gifted cellist and university track star, is just about to embark on what promises to be a glittering career in international classical music – with his lovely Anna by his side – he finds himself unexpectedly detained and then trapped in the East. While he comes to terms with a new life in East Germany, West German brother Josef carves out a simple yet productive life of his own – and marries Anna in the bargain. This is a story of unfulfilled and broken promises, betrayal and survival, political intrigue and self-deception. But that makes the play sound so much more interesting than it actually is.

The script is simplistic, the plot threadbare. Scenes come and go with an overall sense of incompleteness, jerked forward by an overevident Writer’s Hand. Characters are stage devices, aiding or hindering the brothers’ lives to force dramatic swells. The dialogue is two-dimensional, and causality is a frequent casualty: Erich carries the crippling injury of having been shot in the leg while attempting an escape, yet despite this, he still retains his sprinter’s speed; when his finger is broken on the eve of his London Philharmonic audition, he doesn’t go to the hospital – he goes to teach lessons on the East side, where he is trapped forever, oh the irony; the American intelligence services are too blinkered by their fear of the Eastern Bloc to recognize that the “code” in the brothers’ infrequent letters from either side of the wall is not espionage but sequences of chess moves in the lads’ long-distance game (OK, maybe this last is believable after all – WMD in Iraq, anyone?). Scenelet after scenelet lurches along hurriedly, illuminating without cohesion key moments in the 25-year history of the brothers’ separation. It’s more a sketch than a play.

Bradley Carlin directs this Hyde Park Theatre Umbrella Project from Goatsong Productions and has his cast sympathetic to just how heavy the stakes are for all involved, even if the script can’t support that weight. Carlin provides interesting emblematic theatrical moments – a long line of string indicates division, gray stones hint at the progress of the Wall – but they’re just that: mere moments; little here resonates. And Carlin lets the audience sit in the dark too, too long, overly reliant on blackouts to mark ends of scenes. And there are many, many ends of scenes.

The cast makes a gallant effort: Michael Urie is pleasant as easygoing-then-incarcerated Erich, and Zach Muhn in his drab outfit looks as if he’s been dredged up from Seventies Germany. But the supporting players get little to chew on in Frank’s adaptation, so Nazi soldiers and Stasi colonels and Interpol bullies are all B-movie types. Worried parents, girlfriends, and mentors are two-dimensional, despite the actors’ own personal charms and abilities.

One thing that does work, even here: The history is plausible. Such terrible things did happen to people. Families were ripped apart by the Wall and the political will (and occasional sadism) of the rulers of East and West. The choices individuals had to make to survive often had dire effects on loved ones who lived out of contact a mere hundred meters away. But Frank and Craven have penned little more than a soap opera, sadly out of contact themselves with such a potentially intense and moving story.

This article appears in July 9 • 2004.