Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – At Second Stage, Bess Wohl’s bittersweet romance CAMP SIEGFRIED is both heavy-handed and frustratingly opaque

• By drediman
• November 23, 2022
• No Comments

A few days ago, I attended a performance of Bess Wohl’s Camp Siegfried at Off-Broadway’s Tony Kiser Theater, courtesy of Second Stage Theater. Set in Long Island in 1938, the new play by Ms. Wohl — best known to New Tork Theater audiences for having penned such plays as Small Mouth Sounds and Grand Horizons — tells the story of two teenagers who meet and fall in love at a lightly veiled pro-Nazi summer camp in Long Island. Suffice to say, things don’t end on an upbeat note.

Ms. Wohl’s slight work — the running time is only a scant 80 minutes — calls to mind Rita Kalnejais‘s This Beautiful Future, a similarly bittersweet Nazi-infused romance about young love gone awry (the play recently concluded a return engagement at the Cherry Lane Theatre). However, unlike the exquisite stylistic flights of fancy taken by Kalnejais‘a play, Camp Siegfried opts for a more naturalistic approach. The result is underwhelming, somehow simultaneously heavy-handed and opaque (e.g., details about a late play visit to the doctor are frustratingly omitted). To boot, young love is rarely dramatically satisfying, given that we’re dealing with under-developed human beings.

Despite my reservations, director David Cromer has done a wonderful job of masking the play’s flaws. He stages the two-hander with his trademark introspection, paying specific attention to the stuff that’s communicated between the lines and artfully alluding to the lovers’ (literally) escalating delusion. He elicits fine performances from Johnny Berchtold and Lily McInerny, two attractive actors who convingly exude youth, with all its lustful naïveté and insecurities.

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CAMP SIEGFRIED
Off-Broadway, Play
Second Stage Theater
1 hour, 20 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 4