‘Misery’: Scenes From Third Reich

“Fear and Misery of the Third Reich,” co-authored by Bertolt Brecht and Margarethe Steffin after their flight to Denmark in the early ‘30s, is the first co-production of the Open Fist Theatre Company and the French Troupe Lunes de Mai.

Brecht and Steffin’s collaboration, which consists of 14 random scenes, attempts to make the case that most ordinary German citizens, although secretly appalled by Hitler, were too terrified to resist his ruthless thrall.

Director Rene Migliaccio opens the evening with a brilliant slow-motion tableau. The performers, all in white-face, grimace ecstatically as they listen to their new Fuehrer. The play also closes with this image--only this time, joy has given way to frozen dread.

Unfortunately, this slow-motion pace persists throughout Migliaccio’s staging, which plunges Brechtian alienation to an unbearably purgatorial level.

Even more annoying are Migliaccio’s appallingly simplistic parallels between fascism and modern-day political conservatism. By juxtaposing slides of Hitler and Sen. Jesse Helms, archival footage of the Auschwitz dead with well-fed young 1960s war protesters, Migliaccio demeans the suffering of Hitler’s victims and dangerously downplays the endemic evils of totalitarianism.

* “Fear and Misery of the Third Reich,” Los Angeles Playhouse, 1625 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Oct. 20. $15. (213) 882-6912. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.