Taking Sides - an Interview with Director Alison Cahill

During the first few weeks of rehearsals, we caught up with director Alison Cahill to learn more about the Highbury Players' upcoming production of Taking Sides by Ronald Harwood.

Not a fan of blogs? Listen to the full interview over on YouTube.

Taking Sides is a dramatisation version of the investigation – or interrogation – into Wilhelm Furtwängler who was the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra during World War II.

"We all like to think we’d make the right moral choice but... who’s to say what we would do in those circumstances?"

 Taking Sides in rehearsal: Andy Tomlinson as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Phil Nooney as Major Steve Arnold

What can you tell us about the play and Furtwängler?

Furtwängler was appointed to the position in 1933 by the Nazi Party and Hitler, and essentially became their ‘Poster Boy’. He decided to stay rather than leave the country, which potentially would have been an option for him, and continued to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic throughout this period. And after the end of the war, he was part of the interrogation/investigations which were the de-Nazification of Germany.

The play is taken from his [Wilhelm Furtwängler] diaries of that time and most of the characters apart from him are potentially amalgamations of people behind and involved with the interrogation and investigation.

He was ultimately charged and then the charges were dropped. He still remains a controversial figure. If you look him up online there are still people who believe he was wholly innocent, and people that believe he was completely guilty and complicit within the Nazi regime. It’s true that he saved a lot of people, but again the people that he saved are very pro-Furtwängler and his detractors say that he only did it for his own benefit.

 Taking Sides in rehearsal: Leighton Coulson as Lt David Wills, Andy Tomlinson as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Phil Nooney as Major Steve Arnold

Who are the main protagonists? 

So, the two main protagonists in the play are Wilhelm Furtwängler and also a Major Steve Arnold, an American Major who was not a career soldier. Before the war he was a Claims Assessor.

He represents himself as being completely ignorant of classical music. He’s very anti-elitist. He finds the whole subject of orchestras and that kind of control and power, I think, highly unpalatable. And, being a non-career soldier, I think he has his own agenda when it comes to the interrogation and investigation. He’s had a very rough ride up until this point. Part of the American Advanced Forces. He’s been to Berg and Belson. Knows first-hand the horror of the Death Camps. So, his interaction with Furtwängler and the other people involved in the play comes from a very different direction. And this may or may not have coloured his approach.

Furtwängler, on the other side, believes that art and politics should be separate. That art, music, poetry, theatre, writing etc shouldn’t be influenced by politics and it shouldn’t influence politics. This is potentially a very naïve attitude to have, but he also loved his country and suggests that the reason he stayed was because it showed his support of Germany as a country – not the political regimes that were in place.

There are countless stories of people that he helped get to other countries, escape Germany, Jewish musicians etc. And he was a prolific writer to the Nazi party. He was never a member of the Nazi party, but he did used to write copious letters and refused to give Hitler the due deference he was deserved, which made him a not very popular character but was somebody they realised they needed to portray them as being elitist. Friendly. The picture of Germany. And they used this to great extent.

 Taking Sides in rehearsal: Jonathan Owen as Helmuth Rode and Phil Nooney as Major Steve Arnold

How does Taking Sides deal with the two sides of the argument?

So what the play does is argue both sides. Should Furtwängler have left or should he have stayed? Arnold thinks one. He himself thinks the other.

The play doesn’t give the audience one answer or the other, it doesn't say which is right or which is wrong. Or whose side you should take. It asks the audience to make that decision for themselves, and if we’ve done our job correctly with the performance then that might change nightly, and some audience members should agree with either of the main characters. Or perhaps sit on the fence and not be able to take a side. What is right and what is wrong? And I think that’s quite interesting and I that’s what I suppose really drew me to the play itself and the subject matter.

Although it’s about the de-Nazification of Germany which is obviously a single point in time, it can be tied to any point in time really where we’re asked to make decisions based on what a person who is famous, or a person who is well known, has decided to take a standpoint and either uses – as we are now in a digital age – various forms of digital media and media to make those points. And if you follow one or follow the other, you are demonised for making a particular decision or following a particular path when perhaps the truth is much more grey and the answer is, maybe it is sitting on the fence? What would we do in that situation in those circumstances if our very survival was on the line?

We all like to think we’d make the right moral choice but... who’s to say what we would do in those circumstances? 

Taking Sides is on at Highbury Theatre from Tuesday 17 – Saturday 28 October. Tuesdays – Saturdays. Tickets can be booked online via TicketSource or you can get in contact via the website, or come to our Box Office.

Keep checking Facebook, Instagram and any form of social media to find out details about us. Highbury Theatre is a West Midlands theatre based in Sutton Coldfield. We look forward to seeing you!