AN award-winning play about Hitler’s deputy Rudolph Hess, who bailed out of a plane over Scotland during World War II, is to be staged in Inverness and Stirling before heading to the Prague Fringe.
The Gilded Balloon and Kinbur Productions are reviving Michael Burrell’s one-man play, HESS, which was a hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
It was in May 1941 that Hess, Deputy Fuhrer of the German Reich, bailed out over Scotland on what he claimed was a self-appointed mission of peace. He was immediately imprisoned and later, at the Nuremberg Trials, sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of conspiracy for war and crimes against peace.
HESS is set years into his incarceration in the infamous Spandau Prison. He supposes what he might say to an audience about himself, the Third Reich, and the world created since the downfall of the Nazis. HESS asks how much has really changed and whether the world is really a better place to live.
Dealing with the universal questions of the nature of war and its aftermath, hatred, and racism, the play has parallels with the EU referendum and the rise of Daesh and the immigration issues in Europe.
HESS will play at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on May 3 and The Tolbooth, Stirling on May 20 then the Prague Fringe from May 26.
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