Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.\u201cIt\u2019s farcical,\u201d says Isabelle partway through Jean-Philippe Daguerre\u2019s Farewell Mister Haffmann. She\u2019s talking about her situation \u2014 but she could be talking about the play, which boldly uses black comedy to examine the Nazi occupation of France. It\u2019s a risky move and the set-up feels overly contrived. Yet as the play continues, Daguerre\u2019s approach pays off, becoming a way of distilling the moral dilemmas of living under a fascist regime. Jeremy Sams\u2019 nippy, colloquial translation includes genuine, sickeningly antisemitic French radio broadcasts, and Oscar Toeman\u2019s production deftly builds up to a terrifying climactic scene.The play (which has won multiple awards in France) was inspired by Daguerre\u2019s discovery that his French great-grandparents hid Polish Jews in their cellar. It focuses on Joseph Haffmann, a Jewish jeweller living in Paris, who in 1942 has sent his family to Switzerland and is preparing to go into hiding. He asks his Catholic assistant Pierre to conceal him in the cellar and take over the business. Pierre agrees \u2014 on one condition. Joseph must help Pierre by sleeping with his wife and fathering the child she longs for.As this deeply uncomfortable m\u00e9nage unfolds, stretching into months, then years, it becomes entangled with the bigger nightmare. Joseph (Alex Waldmann) and Isabelle (Jennifer Kirby) \u2014 both quietly and subtly desolate in their own ways \u2014 grow closer while Pierre (Michael Fox) becomes increasingly jealous and manic. Meanwhile, he keep\u2019s his Jewish friend\u2019s business alive by selling necklaces to Nazis \u2014 an irony he eventually voices, bitterly.\u00a0The play raises complex questions about courage, compromise, humanity and identity, and about what we are prepared to do in extremis. While expressing the grim absurdity of the situation, the brittle comedy doesn\u2019t leave room to explore these issues in enough depth and nuance. But it comes into its own in a brilliantly nasty final scene, in which German ambassador Otto Abetz (Nigel Harman) and his wife Suzanne (Jemima Rooper) come round for dinner. As Rooper\u2019s enjoyably ghastly Suzanne gets riotously drunk, Harman\u2019s chilling Otto toys with his hosts\u2019 fear, winding up to a devastating mic-drop moment.Handled with expert timing by Toeman and the cast, it makes a riveting ending, using comedy and dread to create an electric sense of danger. And Abetz\u2019s remark that he joined the Nazi party because he fell in love with Hitler\u2019s \u201cvision\u201d carries its own chill in today\u2019s climate.\u00a0\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606To April 12, parktheatre.co.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.\u201cIt\u2019s farcical,\u201d says Isabelle partway through Jean-Philippe Daguerre\u2019s Farewell Mister Haffmann. She\u2019s talking about her situation \u2014 but she could be talking about the play, which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-237558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237560,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237558\/revisions\/237560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}