Hitlerhoff review on Artshub, by Cecilia Mitchell

The result of two years research for a creative writing Masters thesis, the script of Fringe Festival play Hitlerhoff is brilliant. It is packed with one-liners, discomforting holocaust jokes, pop culture references (Dr Phil-style ‘follow your dreams’ clichés and the best of John Williams’ film scores) and literati send-ups (Waiting for Godot becomes a trilogy: Return of the Godot and The Godot Strikes Back).

Writer Tom Doig merges the personas of Adolf Hitler and David Hasslehoff to create a character so grotesque and bizarre you will laugh out loud and cringe with disgust.

The title role is played with incredible energy and commitment by Tobias Manderson-Galvin, who takes the character from his upbringing as an aspiring actor by a doting yet insipid mother and a father who calls him a ‘homo-fraulein’ in ‘leather panties’ through a series of increasingly hysterical attempts to give expression to his extreme egoism and misunderstood artistic genius.

Supporting Manderson-Galvin are Simone Page Jones and Ezra Bix, both excellent. Bix delivers the funniest moment of the play with a side-splitting portrayal of the Artistique Director of Juilliard Academy, who after an unsuccessful audition calls Hitlerhoff a philistine and implores him never to perform in public, ever. Hitlerhoff is crushed again and again.

Taunted by his nemesis, The Red Tide (of Communism), Hitlerhoff is told that his jokes are not funny, his irony not clever and his homophobia and sexism reveal infantile Oedipal tendencies. Humiliated but undeterred, Hitlerhoff’s desire for fame and glory turns to resentment and rage.

Exploring themes of mass hysteria, propaganda and consumer culture, Hitlerhoff plays on the danger and ridiculousness of the human desire to be ‘special’ and ‘make a difference’. Images of the actual ‘special treatment’ experienced by six million Jews during the Second World War are juxtaposed with the raucous antics of a cast in Baywatch swimsuits, making for chilling and thought-provoking satire.

Performances nightly from Tue 7th – Saturday 11th October, 10:15pm at North Melbourne Town Hall. Log on to www.hitlerhoff.com for details.
www.melbournefringe.com.au or phone (03)9658 9658

Cecilia Mitchell is Editor in Chief of Right Now – Human Rights Law in Australia Magazine. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Music and is currently studying a Juris Doctor at The University of Melbourne.

E: editor@artshub.com.au
W: http://www.rightnow.org.au

original context of this review: http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news.asp?sId=174358&ref=hubber

Hitlerhoff’s Saturday shows nearly sold out – don’t miss out!

Hi all,

if you are planning to come along to the closing night shenanigans of Hitlerhoff, BOOK YOUR TICKTETS NOW, because we are almost sold out.

The same goes for this Saturday night – tickets are selling very fast, don’t be left standing in the hallway!

Review from Richard Watts, Melbourne Fringe Chair

(from Richard Watts’ MAN ABOUT TOWN blog)

Hitlerhoff

An unholy fusion of the lives of Adolph Hitler and David Hasslehoff that’s performed by a cast of three with the assistance of some simply superb video projection (congrats to Anto Skene and Puck Murphy) this twisted piece of camp irony was outrageous and laugh-out-loud funny. It did seem to drag a little towards the end, so I think it might have benefitted from being maybe 10 minutes shorter (though this may also have been an opening night flaw, as I was told today the show ran overtime on its first night), but for the most part it’s a very silly, very funny, and very wrong show. Special mention should be made of of Simone Page Jones and Exra Bix, who between them play a punishing range of characters, and do so with comic aplomb.

Three and half ‘did he just say what I think he said?’ gasps out of five.

Confusing, but possibly very flattering review of Hitlerhoff:

(from Born Dancin – Around the Fringe in 80 Shows)

HITLERHOFF

There are few things in this universe more

POWERFUL STARE OF IAN MCKELLEN

And that’s my review. I would like to discuss this show with others. It’s very good that way.

More feedback on the opening week of Hitlerhoff – from our website

“I didn’t know you could DO that with history!”

- Doug Hendry

Journalism Lecturer, Melbourne University Media and Communications Department

“Wonderful gig. Loved it.”
- Dr. Julie Kimber
Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Melbourne Branch

“Germany is ready for this show … it would be a big controversy … can you please sign a poster for me?”
By Nikolai (from Koln, Germany)

“Intelligent … sophisticated … perfectly cast … the leading man [Tobias Manderson-Galvin] is incredible … I’ve been talking about nothing else.”
- Esther Anatolitis, General Manager Melbourne Fringe

Hitlerhoff intro video sequence – up on YouTube

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=dlVC_kYnEvw

Glowing Hitlerhoff review in the Age, Tuesday 30 Septemer, 2008

” … But [Halfway Across the River] isn’t as strange as Hitlerhoff, a whirlwind tour of fake tan and moustaches, in which audiences are invited to consider the controversial parallels between Adolf Hitler and David Hasselhoff. Together at last!

Tobias Manderson-Galvin is unstoppable in the title role, revelling in every Freudian reference or chance to goose-step through shallow waters. His supporting cast, Simone Page Jones and Ezra Bix, is no less formidable. This is an incredible undertaking, with director Erin Kelly successfully containing the many elements.

For all its postmodern irony this is, simply, a show whose speedos are bulging with gags.

Writer Tom Doig has produced a clever, funny and outrageous play. Have no doubt; this is where the cool kids will be this Fringe Festival.”

- Margaret Paul, reviewer (article on p16)

Hitlerhoff’s opening week – all SOLD-OUT! don’t miss out, people …

AFL Grand Final night show- traditionally a tough one for getting audiences – sold-out;

the post-AFL Grand Final night show – traditionally even harder to get bums on seats – also sold out.

We must be doing something right!

This Tuesday is already selling fast, so if you want a cheap ticket, get in fast – there won’t be much rocking-up-ten-minutes-before-the-show action.

Head straight to www.melbournefringe.com.au and get yours, while you can.

“The best Fringe show I’ve seen in years”… and, “I was left feeling horrible and bad and uncomfortable and clammy and a bit sick”.

Richard Watts, the Chair of Melbourne Fringe, came to opening night, with a friend of his called Carl. Richard told me that Carl had said

“That’s the best Fringe show I’ve seen in years.”

I carried that comment around with me all night.

Get in quick for tickets – I think we’re going to sell out the whole run …

… and some thoughts from Alex Finkle. Alex is filming a doco about the making-of Hitlerhoff, and is knowledgeable about all things Deutsch (she translated the German comedy Mein Fuhrer: Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler for me) …

“Wow! I saw Hitlerhoff last night, and it was such a pleasure to see the culmination of such hard work by such talented people. The Hitlerhoff creature, which has been living in the collective imagination of all the cast and crew, has drawn its first breath. What a celebration! But, you know, I was left feeling horrible and bad and uncomfortable and clammy and a bit sick.

This is how I am supposed to feel, I know, but nonetheless, I felt horrible even though I knew what it was about and completely knew the content. How strange that none of the impact is lost, the more familiar one is with the show.

The reason why it made me feel so awful is because it is so easy to just sit there and receive all the light and sound and movement and energy. For all that stimuli to just fill our brains. For our brains to just accept it. The same way our brains accept, ingest and process all the messages and media and atrocities on a daily basis. So many references both overt and subtle are crammed into Hitlerhoff, that even the most detached person couldn’t help but pick up on them.

It is so disturbing to see how sheer darkness can be wrapped up in frivolity and swallowed so readily.

This is the point.

Realising it doesn’t make it any less confronting.

So now we know. We are reminded of something we know in our souls, something that we always knew but something that we manage to ignore in our day-to-day lives. Once again the (rhetorical) question arises, “what do I do about it?” Whenever I come to this place, whether it be from thinking about human suffering, corruption, war, the lip-service given to our dying seas, lack of concern for the world’s diminishing forests and the dwindling biodiversity, a German word comes to mind. This German word is “Mitläufe”. Literally it means “with + run”. Its meaning is complicity. For me it evokes an image of someone who goes along with something, even though they sense or know it is wrong. In Nazi times it referred to those people who were well aware that their Jewish neighbours were disappearing but they didn’t quite know for sure if the rumours of what may have befallen them were true. It was to unbelievable to believe. So they just continued to live their lives pushing that inkling of sinister darkness out of their minds. Passive. Not seeking the information that would allow them to be sure.

It is a bit like us and global warming / climate change, the same beast whatever the name. We are not sure if that is really happening so we will buy giant LCD TV screens and Hummers until we are completely sure that this is the cause of resource depletion. But we won’t stop consuming as a pre-emptive measure. We won’t change anything about our lives or our behaviour until we are sure, until it has been proven.

What is the answer? Consume less. Sure. Seek knowledge. Act. Tell people. Give them permission to see what they sense and to voice that. Wake up! Wake up out of this induced slumber of helpless not-quite-sure-ness. (Ironically, “wache auf” – German for “wake up” – was also used in Nazi propaganda to galvanise the German public of the 1930s.)

Hitlerhoff reminds us what we already know: It’s all connected. It’s all happened before. It’s happening now.

I think that is what makes me feel so sick.

Exciting news: Baywatch Blitzkrieg to open the Fringe Festival Club!

on Friday 26 September, at 11.30pm (just after Hitlerhoffis opening night), the lovely, leggy Baywatch dancers will be performing in the Melbourne Fringe Festival Club, in the North Melbourne Town Hall. There will be a cameo from Hitlerhoff himself, and a preview of fraction of the shock(ing) and awe(some) audio-visual spectacular that has been mobilised for this show. If you can’t come to opening night, you can still come to this!

And it’s free!