Robert Icke adapts and directs Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck’s film, The Lives of Others, with impressive technical skill on a revolving stage and a changing set designed by Hildegard Bechtler.
The German film, a psychological spy thriller, made a big impression when it premiered in 2006 and won many awards, including an Oscar.
The action takes place in East Germany during the Cold War in 1984. A senior covert secret police officer spies on a non-subversive Berlin playwright and his mistress, a famous actress.
The Stasi, the Ministry for State Control, kept the citizens of the German Democratic Republic under strict control by continuous state surveillance. Everybody is encouraged to spy on everybody else. There is no privacy. Bugging is the norm. The state employed 200,000 informers.
The cast is headed by Keira Knightley and Luke Thompson as the couple and Stephen Dillane as the police officer spying on them.
Robert Icke’s two-hour ten-minute adaptation, acted without interval, is not as clear and nor is it as accessible as the Henckel Von Donnersmarck film. The clever staging highjacks the attention.
The movie is infinitely superior to the stage version, which is emotionally more involving and also more exciting. See the movie if you haven’t already seen it. The movie actors have a greater dramatic input and are not upstaged by the scenery and twenty five distracting and unnecessary supernumeraries milling around.
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