It is hard to imagine a more disturbing sight than that of the old men of a Nazi Waffen SS division marching through the streets of a modern European country and being celebrated as national heroes.
This is the controversial annual event that Latvian playwright Aleksey Scherbak has chosen for his play about his country. The action takes place in a Riga apartment block populated by the conflicting elements surrounding the controversial parade. There is a Russian family with two teenage children; their uncle Misha (Struan Rodger) who fought the fascists for the Soviets lives next door, and on the other side of the corridor lives octogenarian Valdis (Ewan Hooper) who fought for the Nazis during the German occupation.
Michael Longhurst's production superbly handles the human traffic passing through three apartments in one space. And he gets some excellent performances from his cast, particularly Michael Nardone as Russian patriarch Sasha who wants the world to move on from the enmity of the Second World War. But Sasha's view so infects Scherbak's play with a moral ambiguity that the message of reconciliation feels hard to justify.
