Von Ribbentrop's Watch

This was quite a special occasion, as The Bartholomew Players had managed to secure the rights to present the World Amateur Theatre premiere of “Von Ribbentrop’s Watch” by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and the authors were in the audience to see the show.

In the programme, Laurence Marks recounts how he bought a vintage Longines watch in Los Angeles in 1985.  Many years later it was in need of some maintenance, and the repairer noticed that the watch had been engraved with the initials “JVR” and a swastika.  Further investigation revealed that it had probably been owned originally by Joachim von Ribbentrop, the prominent Nazi, and could be worth tens of thousands of pounds.

Laurence Marks was faced with a moral dilemma – what should he do?  Sell the watch?  Donate the proceeds to charity?  But who would accept what was essentially Nazi money?  So he did what any self-respecting author would do and sat down with his long-time collaborator Maurice Gran to write a play about it.

Staging this play was evidently a labour of love for the Director: having secured the rights through imagination and determination, he showed similar qualities in this uncompromising dissection of the relationships in a Jewish family.  The ensemble work was of a very high quality and the fight scene almost alarmingly realistic.  I don’t think I have ever seen so much broken glass on a stage before – resonating with Jewish wedding traditions and modern history.

Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran remarked at the end that it had been “done so well”, which is a bigger compliment than anything I can write.

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