The Stone offers a snapshot of 60 troubled years of German history (1935-1993) where political tensions and treachery are focused on the ownership of a house outside Dresden. In a fluid, dream-like way protagonists from the past step out to continue unfinished conversations with the house's present owner, Heidrun. The set is a brightly lit cell, hardly a home at all, and fittingly the disputed claims and counter claims of ownership take place in this hostile interrogation room.
       The family have once again taken possession of their home after it was confiscated by the The German Democratic Republic but it becomes clear that this is yet another dispossession in a long line of criminal confiscations. Witha, the grandmother, poised on the brink of senility, crouches at the beginning under a table, fearing the falling bombs on Dresden. Although it is 1993 the house brings back traumatic memories while her daughter and granddaughter, oblivious to her panic, drink coffee and eat chocolate cake. Coffee and chocolate cakes are the stable symbols of unconcern as the world unravels about them.
       The grandmother through omission, handy senility and ingenuity has woven a myth around how her husband, Wolfgang, and herself bought the house from his Jewish boss enabling him and his wife, Mieze, to flee from the Nazis with the money. The myth has been passed down through the generations but has become increasingly threadbare: why were such fervent anti-Nazis as Witha and Wolfgang so keen to name their daughter Heidrun after a Nordic goat whose milk makes you immortal? Why was Witha a member of the Nazi party? Could it be that Hannah's grandparents were the exact opposite of their version of events: card-carrying Nazis who absorbed Hitler's vision as greedily as goat's milk?
       The stone of the play's title was allegedly thrown through the window of the house in the 1930s by Nazi sympathizers because Witha and Wolfgang had aided the Jewish owners' escape. The stone was later buried in the garden but has resurfaced as a memorial to the grandparents' act of bravery. But nothing is fixed as alternative realities impose on the received version of events. The stone's slow trajectory over the years has haunted Witha and now as it shatters glass again and again in her memories we know it has the power to shatter illusions too.
       The house itself brings misfortune; it has broken up Heidrun's marriage since her husband wants no part in its ownership. Surely one should let go of such an oppressive load but the house clings to Heidrun with the weight of history. When Stefanie the tenant who lived in the house during East Germany's communist years also arrives to stake her claim simple exchanges become overtly sinister. Discussion about the swing in the garden lead to Stefanie asking: 'In which direction do you swing?'
       German guilt is best expressed in Heidrun's gesture of naming her children either Daniel or Hannah in an attempt to reassert her family's innocence. The play's most exciting and troubling presence is the formal and courageous Mieze played with ironic detachment by Justine Mitchell. Again over coffee and chocolate in the 1930s she tries to make a lasting, living connection with her dispossessor, Witha, by forcing her by her actions to never forget her name.
       Although brilliantly acted and well directed by Ramin Grey, the play suffers a little from its own brevity; the shocking disclosures that are detonated like a series of depth charges threaten to overwhelm the lightness and rapidity of the staging.
Daniel Jeffreys