Now nearly two decades on, this great contemporary classic returns to it's original home in a new production directed by Michael Grandage. C. P. Taylor's hypnotic 1981 play, superbly revived in the Covent Garden venue where it was first seen with Alan Howard playing the fictional good man, John Holder. He is just the sort of fellow needed to activate the full-scale extermination programme on humane grounds, and his progress to the gates, of hell is almost imperceptible. Dance trips lightly around this request without refusing it. So do we all duck and weave, the playwright suggests, when confronted with apparently simple moral choices and decisions.
Music is a balm for all sores, a soothing compensation.
Until we reach a stunning point of no return at Auschwitz, where a band in striped prison uniforms materialises playing a Schubert march. Now Holder really must face the music. Dressed to kill in his black uniform, he stands horrified at the entrance to the death camp. CP Taylor's 1981 musical comedy, which shows how a decent Frankfurt professor ends up supervising at Auschwitz. It's like an intellectual Pennies From Heaven with jackboots.