Fine Line Between Collaboration and Betrayal At Chichester's Minerva Theatre

Ronald Harwood’s Taking Sides and Collaboration return to Chichester after playing to full houses during their last visit to the Festival Theatre. The two plays appear prior to a West End run at the Duchess Theatre from 20 May.

Written as separate plays but designed to complement each other, Collaboration and Taking Sides both explore the fine line between collaboration and betrayal during the Second World War.

Collaboration had its world premiere last year, while Taking Sides also opened for the first time at Chichester in the Minerva Theatre in 1995 with Michael Pennington playing the part of interrogator Major Arnold, directed by the late Harold Pinter. Once again, Pennington returns to Chichester to play the famous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, as he undergoes cross-examination.

Prized by Hitler as the cultural jewel in the crown of the Third Reich, Furtwängler became the perfect post-war target for interrogation as a Nazi sympathiser. In Harwood’s play, Major Steve Arnold, who has witnessed the horrors of Belsen, is about to interrogate the conductor.

Pennington also plays composer Richard Strauss in Harwood’s Collaboration. The play opens in 1931 in a spirit of optimism as Strauss and writer Stephan Zweig embark on an invigorating artistic partnership. However, Zweig is a Jew and the Nazis are on the march.

Michael Pennington’s career has spanned over forty years, during which time he has played a wide variety of leading roles for the RSC, the National Theatre and the English Shakespeare Company, which he co-founded in 1986 and which toured the world three times.

David Horovitch returns to play both Major Arnold in Taking Sides and Stefan Zweig in Collaboration. His theatre credits include Absurd Person Singular at Theatre Royal Windsor and in the West End, Tony in Losing Louis at Hampstead Theatre and Burleigh in Mary Stuart at the Donmar Warehouse.

The complete original cast returns to perform in both plays, and includes Isla Blair, Pip Donaghy, Martin Hutson, Melanie Jessop, and Sophie Roberts.

Taking Sides and Collaboration are at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester 28 April – 16 May.

More:

• Chichester Festival Theatre website 
• Box Office 01243 781312