Sometimes, you just have to accept that you’re getting older. One way you realize this is by discovering that certain things—things you absorbed almost by osmosis—simply aren’t part of the knowledge base of younger generations. Take, for instance, the meaning of the phrase “Ronseal” (“it does exactly what it says on the tin”), or knowing who Nancy Reagan was.
My impressions
This week, I went to see Robert Icke’s production of The Lives of Others in the West End—a show that is almost always sold out. It’s a stage adaptation of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s excellent 2006 film, which tells the story of a Stasi agent who becomes obsessed with a couple of artists, listening to their every word. For me, these themes were so familiar that, while I enjoyed the performance, I left with a slight sense of disappointment.
That wasn’t the case for two young people—complete strangers to me—whom I overheard as we made our way slowly toward the exit. They were telling their friends that they needed time to process what they had just seen—to sit with it and let the experience sink in. It struck me that they knew nothing about any of it. They didn’t know what had happened in the GDR, nor were they familiar with the Stasi, the culture of informants, or the pervasive surveillance.
I was about nine or ten years old when the Berlin Wall fell. As I grew up, more and more details about how that regime functioned came to light; people talked about it, wrote about it, and made films about it. That particular film, in fact, was released twenty years ago. So, even though the show didn’t have the impact I had hoped for and doesn’t add much to the original work, it still strikes me as an excellent reason to present it right now—in a world where, in effect, we invite surveillance into our lives through social media.