If the title seems familiar, it's because A Report on the Banality of Love is an imagined version of the decades-long affair between German philosophers Martin Heidegger, who would become notorious for his pro-Nazi views as Hitler climbed to power, and Hannah Arendt, who would become famous for her Eichmann-trial inspired book "A Report on the Banality of Evil."
This is a world premiere from South Florida playwright/journalist Mario Diament, and The Promethean Theater gives it a splendid production. Diament -- who teaches journalism at Florida International University and writes a column for La Nacion, a newspaper in his native Buenos Aires used the correspondence between Heidegger and Arendt as part of the research for what his program note emphasizes is "a work of fiction" that involves scenes that "are invented or imagined."
Separating the scenes are "academics on video," actors on TV screens giving historical and other background information (think Warren Beatty's "Reds"), and the program lists more than a dozen sources for their comments. As if to reinforce the distinction between imagined fiction and provable fact, A Report on the Banality of Love carries a subtitle: "A Play in Five Encounters." The five scenes that make up the one-act present personal and political snapshots of Germany stretching from post-World War I to post-World War II, from the 1920s to the 1950s. Arendt's a Jewish student in his class at Marburg University. Heidegger was raised Catholic and thought about becoming a priest but is married and has become a celebrity among intellectuals (two years before publishing his hallmark "Being and Time") by the time he asks her to stop by his office.
Arendt, in a drab, loose dress, is nervous. She's 17 years younger than the professor and explains that "it's people who intimidate me, not ideas." He muses that he generally finds Jewish women "quite intelligent, but aggressive and arrogant." The affair begins then and there.
In the next encounter, 11 months later, they rendezvous in a hotel near the university, and Arendt has become a woman in red. When we seen them in the 1930s, she's wearing skirts at the popular mid-calf length and living in Berlin, where he has come to apply for a job.
As a child of the Black Forest, he feels out of place in the big city. She talks of Lotte Lenya and Brecht, and of the demonstrations denouncing Jews as the cause of Germany's economic problems. He says the Nazis' National Socialism is the answer. She gets married. He becomes head of Freiburg University. She declares her intention to flee Germany.
The last scene, in post-war Germany, tells the tale almost without words. As Heidegger, Colin McPhillamy enters in a slouch, seemingly weighted down by events and a coat that now seems far to big for him. Amy McKenna's Arendt, now working with the Commission of European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, sits erect in a tailored suit. He complains of his lost prestige, that as the university rector for a year he signed off only on Nazi crackdowns that were inevitable. She counters that he never has backed away from his anti-Semitic statements. He pleads for her help in rehabilitating his reputation: "You're a celebrity."
Good work all around. The actors play their scenes quietly, without melodrama. Each "encounter" is played before a line-art projection of the setting, with minimal furniture and props. Matt Corey's original music between scenes is apt, especially the long, low notes of foreboding.
Colin McPhillamy as Martin Heiddeger, Amy McKenna as Hannah Arendt in A Report on the Banality of Love.
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