NO MORE PEACE!
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A fiery Marxist, Toller looked at communism not merely as a formula for a new world order but as a kind of religion. For him it provided the only explanation for the chaos that followed the First World War, in which he had served as a German-army infantryman. His devotion to communism eventually landed him behind bars, accused of treason; and when one of his plays, The Transformation, was so successful that he was offered amnesty, he turned it down because his jailmates, charged with the same crimes, would not be pardoned as well. Toller committed suicide while exiled in New York in 1939, as Hitler prepared to advance on Europe. No More Peace!, written just a few years earlier, had virtually predicted the rise of Nazism.
Toller was unrelenting in his politics, and Live Bait’s production of No More Peace! is loyal to that spirit. But surprisingly, the play doesn’t come off simply as propaganda, or as a two-dimensional confrontation between good guys and bad guys; in fact, as cartoonish as they often get, the players all seem to have multiple dimensions, and even the most evil of the lot seems capable of love.
Paul Quinn’s snappy direction is perfectly underscored by Sharon Evans’s elaborate set. The floors are covered with a gigantic map of Europe, and the backdrop is like a giant pop-up card, changing easily from Mount Olympus ro Cain’s throne room to the streets of Dunkelstein. The costumes are colorful and clownish, and perfectly matched by the characters’ farcical whiteface.
