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Independant TheatreThe new Independent Theatre production is another novel adaptation from the heart - and mind - of Artistic Director Rob Croser, this time based on George Eliot's novel 'Daniel Deronda', which is set in England in 1875, a setting which seemed to be somewhat removed when Croser began working on the theatre adaptation. "It's a complex story, and it can be fairly stolid, and I pruned quite a lot out of it," admits Croser, who had to cut characters and pare things down, losing some of the "flowery Victorian grammar so it's now a modern and taut play." In fact, he had to do a good bit more than that. Eventually, Croser had to bite the bullet and completely rework the script: he was forced to the realisation that a nineteenth century Edwardian English story needed something more to turn an audience's head. It was from screenwriter and playwright John Logan - who visited Adelaide earlier this year when Independent Theatre remounted his 'Never The Sinner' - that the inspiration came. "John Logan had read it and could see I wasn't happy with the way things were going. We talked about it, and about the essential nature of the piece... Jewish heritage is a difficult concept to grasp." Logan suggested setting the play in Germany in the 1930s, and this was the spark Croser needed to reapply himself. Logan has had a long and close relationship with Independent Theatre and Croser, and the two talked through what was lost from the novel and what had been gained by the relocation. Croser sighs as he explains the work that went into getting his script ready in time... " the plot framework is Eliot's then, but I've put in new dialogue and new scenes, there's new locations and it's managed to up the ante in quite a lot of them, with our characters living in Berlin in 1933." This, I suppose, invokes a distillation of the whole idea of Jewish heritage: nothing could be such an obvious pointer to the nature of the play than the spectre of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor in January of that year, and the full horrors of the Third Reich had yet to be revealed; Croser sought to locate his play just at the beginning of the horror. "Jewish people had just begun having their rights stripped away from them, and I was aiming for just that sense of how life had changed for everyone. "It's more interesting in a sense," he says of 'Daniel Deronda', "because people are still going about their lives. The play is more about this young man believing he's a German aristocrat, therefore he's above all of that, but it goes all the way down through the social strata to the Jewish people." Indeed, this is another thread to the tale of Daniel Deronda - it's very Dickensian - the young man discovers he is possibly the illegitimate son of a nobleman, and the story is of him questioning his own identity. The more he questions, the more he realizes he can't discover what it is he wants to be, and he seems to have no purpose or sense of identity. Young Deronda (played by Dai Davison, who is fast becoming an Independent Theatre stalwart) leaves university and meets two very different woman, both of whom have a major impact upon his life. There's the glamorous socialite Gwyndolyn (played by Alex Ruffin), and the young Jewish woman Mirah (Hannah Moore). "As he moves between the worlds of these two women, he also finds himself drawn more and more to helping this young Jewish girl," explains Croser. As he helps Mirah in her life Deronda meets the mystic, Mordecai (Nick Bennett). "[Mordecai's ideal] is about creating a homeland for the Jews, and it's extraordinary for George Eliot to be writing that in the 1870s, but it gives the mystical dimension to the story." This idea of Exodus, the search for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, is classic boatpeople stuff, I suggest to Croser, having a shot in the dark. It's a suggestion which had not escaped his attention, but he resists reading too much into it. "Only in the sense of bringing it [the play] even further up to date, the idea of bringing a people out of the darkness..." he murmurs. "That's what Mordecai is looking for, a new Moses to lead his people to the Promised Land."
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