Swapping Sides

In 1995 he played the part of interrogator Major Arnold. 13 years on, he's playing the legendary German conductor Wilhelm Furtwngler, the man on the wrong end of Arnold's determined interrogation.

As Pennington says, it's an interesting challenge '“ and one which most definitely revives memories of a thrilling first production.

"It's a very happy memory," he says. "Everything about it was right.

Playing Furtwngler was the late Daniel Massey who died from Hodgkin's disease, aged 64, just a few years later. His illness added to the performance, Pennington believes.

"He was ill at the time. It was no secret. It turned out to be his final performance, but I remember his gaining strength during the run. It was an absolute example of watching work prolong someone's life."

Written by Ronald Harwood, who has had a home in the Chichester area ever since, the play looks at the fine line between collaboration and betrayal.

Prized by Hitler as the cultural jewel in the crown of the Third Reich, Furtwngler became the perfect post-war target for interrogation as a Nazi sympathiser. Arnold, who has witnessed the horrors of Belsen, is about to interrogate him . . .

As Pennington says, it's a great example of the genre "what would you have done?" - the big 20th century question. Is it right to apply retrospective judgement on what happened during a totalitarian regime? Was Furtwngler wrong? The answer is that Taking Sides doesn't take sides. The conclusion is left wide open.

Complicating matters is the fact that Furtwngler is not an easy character to like, a great autocrat, very much an old German in the Prussian tradition.

The American officer interrogates him with ferocity because he can't forget what he has just seen. He was present at the opening of the death camps.

"He is not able to hold still for long before an artist saying that art is above politics."

Inevitably, Massey's masterful performance comes to mind, particularly as Pennington must have shared the stage with him in the play for maybe 200 performances.

But the point is that with a good play it's perfectly possible for different actors to inhabit a key role. You just have to look for something that makes it yours.

"Furtwngler was an autocrat by instinct who couldn't stop his aristocratic behaviour. But he is in a situation of extreme vulnerability because he can't get back to work."

During the de-Nazification process, his career is on hold, perhaps even finished: "All his contemptoraries have gone back. They have gone through this rather random process, but Furtwngler was still concerned that he might never work again.

"He feels very vulnerable and needs to win but at the same time his autocratic nature militates against him gaining any sympathy."

There is also, of course, the fact that Furtwngler was clearly very very compromised: "You see him conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and there are huge flags with swastikas on. It's still a very difficult image to get out of your mind.

"But his defence is that he was in a good position in the orchestra to help Jewish musicians get away. But his enemies would say that that was pure conscience-salving... There is no doubt that Furtwngler accommodated. He played at Hitler's birthday. He played for a big party to celebrate the annexation of Czechoslovakia."

Playing with Taking Sides, on its world premiere, is Harwood's companion piece Collaboration, a play which opens in 1931 in a spirit of optimism as Strauss (Michael Pennington) and writer Stephan Zweig (David Horovitch) embark on an invigorating artistic partnership. However, Zweig is a Jew and the Nazis are on the march . . .

"This doesn't please the rising Nazi party at all. They want him not to continue working with Zweig, but Strauss felt he could face them down. He was the great Richard Strauss and the Nazis would only be around for a year or two.

"But then the Nazis point out to Strauss that he has a Jewish daughter-in-law . . . "

Taking Sides and Collaboration are at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester from July 16-August 30. Tickets available online at www.cft.org.uk or from the box office on 01243 781312.