Life in Nazi-occupied Guernsey in World War 2 – collaboration or resistance?

Robert Tanitch reviews Gabriel at Richmond Theatre, Surrey

The British government in World War 2 saw no strategic importance in the Channel Islands and they were demilitarised. The Germans swiftly invaded.

The islanders had no support from the mainland or any other nation. They were forced to co-exist. How would you have behaved if the Nazis had been billeted on you or had been your next-door neighbour?

Paul McGann as Von Pfunz in Gabriel

Faced with starvation and no basic provisions, many women chose survival rather than patriotism and slept with the invaders.

There have been few films about the German invasion and occupation of the Channel Islands.

Ironically, a British film has just come out, Another Mother’s Son, with Jenny Seagrove, about an escaped Russian prisoner in Guernsey.

There was a British television series, Island at War, in 2004.with James Whilby.

There was a British comedy-thriller film about rescuing a prize pedigree cow, Appointment with Venus with David Niven and Glynis Johns in 1951.

There was also a play by William Douglas Home, The Dame of Sark, with Celia Johnson in 1974.

Moira Buffini sets her play in an old farmhouse in Guernsey in 1943, two and a half years into the occupation.

A young man suffering from amnesia is discovered on the beach. Who is he? Is he a British pilot? Is he a Nazi officer? He is fluent in English and German. The women, who rescue and hide him, call him Gabriel because a young girl thinks he is an angel.

Archangel Gabriel, you will remember, is God’s supreme messenger. Has Gabriel (6ft 2 Robin Morrissey) come to earth to kill a German officer (Paul McGann) who wants to have an affair with a not unwilling British widow (Belinda Lang)?

Moira Buffini’s romantic melodrama was first seen 20 years ago. It’s not worth reviving. But its female perspective on war appealed to the director, Kate McGregor. I should have preferred to have seen something more believable and less melodramatic