{"id":956052,"date":"2026-11-02T23:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T23:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/956052\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T23:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T23:26:09","slug":"the-lives-of-others-theater-review-keira-knightley-in-stasi-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/956052\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Lives of Others’ Theater Review: Keira Knightley in Stasi Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s not surprising that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck\u2019s acclaimed 2006 drama, The Lives of Others, which won the Academy Award for best international film, should resonate so strongly today, as AI makes state surveillance an ever more sophisticated and terrifying fact of life. Anyone coming away from the Gaza documentary Naza<\/a>, for example, does so with a troubled glance at their smart phone.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd who better to adapt the film for the stage than Robert Icke, who made his name with his and Duncan Macmillan\u2019s groundbreaking take on George Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/a> and drew acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic with his contemporary version of Oedipus, starring Mark Strong and Tony winner Lesley Manville. Von Donnersmarck set The Lives of Others in the same year that Orwell\u2019s prescient fiction takes place, so this production seems like a match made in dystopian heaven.<\/p>\n

\n\tIcke\u2019s adaptation sticks closely to von Donnersmarck\u2019s original screenplay. It\u2019s East Berlin, the Cold War. Stasi official Gerd Wiesler (Stephen Dillane<\/a>), a gray-spirited devotee of the Communist regime, is given a new target: the dramatist Georg Dreyman (Luke Thompson<\/a>). As \u201ca non-subversive playwright they actually read in the West,\u201d Dreyman seems an unlikely source of suspicion. But the order has been given by Wiesler\u2019s slimy, careerist boss Grubitz (Paul Higgins) at the behest of Hempf (Andrew Woodall), a party minister. Hempf\u2019s motivation isn\u2019t ideology but lust \u2014 he simply wants the writer out of the way to ease his pursuit of Dreyman\u2019s actress-lover, Christa-Maria Sieland (Keira Knightley<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd so Wiesler sends his team into Dreyman\u2019s apartment, bugging every nook and cranny they can find, while Wiesler himself sets up shop in the attic with headphones and a typewriter, listening in.<\/p>\n

\n\tIcke uses his formidable talent for imaginative, dynamic, multimedia staging to manifest the act of surveillance \u2014 inherently secretive, out of sight \u2014 into something extremely tangible. He\u2019s aided hugely in this by designer Hildegard Bechtler\u2019s remarkable set. Dreyman\u2019s apartment is a huge, three-dimensional, fully furnished creation, on a constant and pacy revolve. Often a mobile stage offers merely a changing view of static actors, but this one enables the audience to follow multiple characters as they move through the apartment, in and out of rooms, with action often happening in different spaces at once. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe benefit is in evidence almost immediately at a packed artsy house party \u2014 which for the Stasi represents \u201cprime hunting ground for subversion\u2026 with people who can\u2019t keep quiet\u201d \u2014 where the gate-crashing Wiesler gets his first, close-up glimpse of his prey; then again as the wiretappers swarm over the same now-empty space.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe apartment will occasionally deconstruct, its walls pulled apart to make way for a bar, or Wiesler\u2019s own drab home \u2014 some of the set segues almost defying logic. The walls also act as a screen for video designer Tal Yarden\u2019s Big Brotherish black and white images, notably offering close-ups of interrogations taking place live upstage.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo the side is Wiesler\u2019s small table, which he shares with a subordinate who takes the night shift. While this represents the attic, the show\u2019s strongest conceit involves Dillane walking unseen among the other characters, at one point even sitting on the sofa between them. This suggests both the intense focus of Wiesler\u2019s eavesdropping and its insidious intrusion. This presence takes on a metaphorical weight, too, as the snoop becomes something of a guardian angel for the unsuspecting people downstairs.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust as in the film, the speed with which Wiesler starts to sympathize with the couple can feel like a stretch, a romanticized wish-fulfillment. That said, this fits with the dogged optimism in humanity that fuels the material. Von Donnersmarck has provided plenty of reasons for the spy\u2019s compassion, particularly the effect on Dreyman of his blacklisted director and mentor\u2019s suicide, and Christa-Maria\u2019s heartrending inability \u2014 such is the state\u2019s willingness to destroy lives and livelihoods \u2014 to refuse the venal minister\u2019s sexual attentions.<\/p>\n

\n\tWiesler\u2019s change of heart leads the piece into more conventional thriller territory as Dreyman is driven to actually attempt something subversive. Wiesler schemes to keep him out of trouble, but Grubitz takes charge and closes in. While the film handled this transition superbly, the play fares less well, and ironically, the technical virtuosity is partly to blame. Once so dazzling, the constant revolution of the stage, the mechanically slick choreography of actors around it, the sheer repetitiveness of it all \u2014 heightened by composer Max Richter\u2019s overly insistent score of strident strings, bells and whistles \u2014 now slowly combine to dampen the tension, not heighten it.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd while engaging so well with the mechanics of state repression, Icke and his team have lost some of the weary bleakness of the period, not least by limiting Wiesler\u2019s solitary life outside of his work. The use of Bowie\u2019s \u201cSound and Vision\u201d and Mama Cass\u2019 \u201cMake Your Own Kind of Music\u201d are attention-grabbing but, for a piece about listening, there could have been a little more silence.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a return to the stage after 11 years (her last appearance was as the title character in Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Raquin<\/a> on Broadway), Knightley demonstrates just what an accomplished, ever more confident actress she\u2019s become in that time. While Christa-Maria was effectively a supporting character in the film, she is center stage here \u2014 from being the vibrant party hostess who captivates her guests with an impromptu performance, to the desperate victim of the minister\u2019s attentions (his sexual assault is extremely difficult to watch, not least because of Knightley\u2019s performance) and of Wiesler\u2019s albeit reluctant interrogation. Not surprisingly, when Christa-Maria\u2019s tribulations are captured on the video screen, Knightley\u2019s close-ups are sensational.<\/p>\n

\n\tDillane, a master of pained introversion, probably would have killed for a close-up. Instead, he\u2019s restricted too often to skulking about in his headphones, reacting to those around him, lost at times amid the showy staging. But the actor is perfectly cast, icily conveying Wiesler\u2019s dry, driven nature and the awkwardness with which he carries his newfound benevolence. And it\u2019s usually Dillane who offers the play\u2019s shards of humor. \u201cI\u2019m nobody,\u201d he says believably when the unsuspecting Christa-Maria welcomes him at the party. \u201cWho told you that?\u201d she asks. \u201cMy mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAround this pair, the acting can be indifferent. As Jerska, the blacklisted director, Nick Holder strikes the wrong note, offering an ugly, ruffian personality that denies any sympathy for the man. Higgins riffs amusingly on his obsequious toad from Slow Horses<\/a>, but lacks the steely calculation behind the easy smile. And though Thompson is efficient and likable enough, his Dreyman doesn\u2019t really register. The sweet-natured idealist can be a thankless role to play, but this performance underlines how effortlessly charming and affecting Sebastian Koch was in the film, the pathos he created sorely lacking here.<\/p>\n

\n\tVenue: Adelphi Theatre, London
Cast: Keira Knightley, Stephen Dillane, Luke Thompson, Calum Finlay, Paul Higgins, Leda Hodgson, Nick Holder, Irfan Shamji, Adrian Woodall
Playwright: Robert Icke, adapted from the film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Director: Robert Icke
Set and costume designer: Hildegard Bechtler
Lighting designer: Jon Clark
Music: Max Richter
Sound designer and additional music: Giles Thomas
Video designer: Tal Yarden
Presented by Sonia Friedman Productions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not surprising that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck\u2019s acclaimed 2006 drama, The Lives of Others, which won the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,50838,226610,202082,337,326732,18916],"class_list":["post-956052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-keira-knightley","tag-london-theater","tag-luke-thompson","tag-movies","tag-stephen-dillane","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}