Navigate to News section

Two Plays, Two Adolfs

A serious take on Eichmann and a less serious one on Hitler

by
Marc Tracy
October 18, 2011
From Hitler Hero in Love.(Hitler Hero in Love)
From Hitler Hero in Love.(Hitler Hero in Love)

The new play Captors doesn’t quite show you the Eichmann you loved, the Eichmann you knew, the Eichmann with a song in his heart. The production, set to open in Boston later this year with hopes of eventually making its way south along the seaboard to Broadway, depicts the main architect of the Nazis’ final solution as he engages in a stand-off with Mossad operatives in Buenos Aires in 1960. (He was captured, brought to Israel, tried, convicted, and put to death: the whole story is told in Nextbook Press’ The Eichmann Trial, by Deborah Lipstadt.) Dramatizing this part of the Eichmann story seems more ambitious than the far more stage-ready trial, which was fictionalized in Robert Shaw’s play Man in the Glass Booth.

For those who have enough room in their heart only for one Adolf, may we suggest Hitler Hero in Love? It’s a new film from India that does the Romeo and Juliet thing with the Indians and Pakistanis. “Hero Hitler,” a boy from an Indian village, decides to become the real Hitler, or something, out of his love for the Pakistani girl. (Pro tip: don’t Google “Hero Hitler”!) There is also car racing and, one presumes, song and dance. Bollywood, don’t ever change.
Eichmann Drama Opening in Boston, With Broadway in Mind [NYT ArtsBeat]
Related: The Eichmann Trial [Nextbook Press]

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.