Finally, A Good Play About Leni the Maybe-Nazi

We are not endlessly puzzled by Riefenstahl, really, and we certainly didn't expect to laugh so much. We went because Thone and Tavares are two of the better (i.e., alive to the art, not simply the craft, of theatre) actors working in Seattle. They make "interesting choices." Tavares is skittishly seductive talking with Adolf, self-involved, checking on how much rope she can get. Thone is imperial, self-mythologizing, on the lookout for the light that falls on her good side. The two are directed by Rhonda J Soikowski, who gives this odd couple a lived-in emotional backdrop that keeps the split-personality artifice from getting too cleverly "meta" for dramatic good.

Sarah Greenman's play almost brilliantly finds the conflict in Leni and gets it to come alive on stage: while Leni insisted politics and art are two separate things, it is clear she was an equally formidable politician--representing her own, personal state. But Greenman isn't satisfied with that surface duality; she understands that the sand of personality is always shifting.

So sometimes young Leni is the aggressor, interrogating, and sometimes the older Leni fires off the tough questions. Both are driven, both are fearful, both duck. But you see how well Greenman understands her subject when it becomes clear that older Leni would rather direct a film, obsess over its look and effect, than worry about historical accuracy. She will sacrifice her personal reputation, the life she lived, if that's what it takes to save a "better self" for the ages, on film. The editing continues, even after death.

Photo: Amy Thone (left) and Alexandra Tavares (right) in Strawberry Theatre Workshop's production of Leni. Erik Stuhaug photo.