Review of "The Last Days of Mankind", by Virginia Bianchi

Last Saturday evening I went to Bristol Old Vic Theatre to see "The Last Days of Mankind". Here's my review of the play.

"The Last Days of Mankind" is a play written by Karl Kraus in 1922. Bristol Old Vic has adapted it, as it originally required an enormous cast and its script had 800 pages. However, it has not lost its original satire and its criticism towards the world of war.

This play hasn't a well-defined plot, as the main idea of the writer was to report aphorisms, conversations anche speeches heard during the First World War. The play is set in Austria from 1914 to 1918, from the start to the end of the war. At first everyone is bored, the jurnalists don't know what to write about, as nothing seems to happen, until the Archduke of Austria is murdered and Austria declares war on Serbia. That is when every citizen in Vienna becomes proud of their country. They finally have something to chat about, newspapers are again full of news (even if this is usually "half-true") and women wish to have a son in order to send him to the front line. The only man who seems to understand what war really is and what its consequences will be is a playwright, who represents Karl Kraus himself. The play is based on the destruction of mankind by war, and the audience is quickly swallowed up into the events.

The play is clearly a powerful satire of the world and society during war time, and of war itself. The audience witness the destruction of humans and of society, usually by laughing, because of how events are presented in the play, but in the meantime they become more and more aware of what the playwright is really implying, especially during the last part of the play, when the real brutality and violence of war are show in details.

In addition, the actors, the direction and all the technical aspects, such as lighting and music, contribuited to making the play a powerful and high quality piece of theatre. It is gripping, moving and funny at the same time, and certainly a must-see play.