Because of coronavirus, 2021 was not the busiest year for many actors. But Robyn Nevin had a major project: she was working on the Australian premiere of Christopher Hampton's A German Life.
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"I spent most of the year learning the 10,000 lines for this particular play," she says.
Nevin, 78, gave up theatre acting several years ago to focus on less strenuous screen work: her last play was the 2016 Sydney Theatre Company production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons.
A few years ago, she became aware of A German Life, a one-woman play that premiered in London in 2019 with Maggie Smith.
When Nevin read it she knew she had to play Brunhilde Pomsel (1911-2017), a personal secretary to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. She would be the only actor on stage for 90 minutes with a huge number of lines to remember and would speak with a German accent.
Nevin found A German Life powerful both as a psychological character study and as a piece of storytelling.
She took it to opera, theatre and film director Neil Armfield and theatrical producer John Frost, who acquired the Australian rights. The result was a well-received production at this year's Adelaide Festival that is now going on tour.
"This is a kind of coming back for me," Nevin says.
Despite her absence for several years from the stage and the challenges the play poses, "I feel like I'm coming home, in a sense."
Hampton compiled the work from the testimony of the 103-year-old Pomsel for a 2014 documentary, also called A German Life.
Pomsel was a secretary in Berlin in the 1930s. Her employers included a Jewish insurance broker and the German Broadcasting Corporation before she went to work in the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. In April 1945, she emerged from the rubble near Adolf Hitler's bunker after the dictator's suicide, waving a white pillowcase to approaching Russian troops. She was in Germany for the rise, fall and aftermath of the Third Reich and lived well into the next century.
What made her controversial - in the documentary and the play - was that "she was not apologetic", Nevin says.
"She denied all responsibility and seemed quite angry to think she ought to be held responsible."
One young woman was very hysterical after she saw it. She was brought up in Germany by a mother who was very conscious of the German burden of World War II
Despite her position deep in the regime working for Goebbels, Pomsel steadfastly maintained she did not know what the Nazi regime was doing and focused on her own life rather than considering any wider issues.
"I'm the messenger," Nevin says.
"I'm truthful to what I believe her attitudes were through being led by the text."
Nevin says her task is to inhabit Pomsel as much as she can.
"It's up to the audience to make their own judgments."
The play raises questions about knowledge and complicity and what people think they would do if they were in a similar situation as well as what is happening in society here and now.
"We had a very strong reaction in Adelaide," Nevin says.
"There's a high concentration of Germans in the population in South Australia and some of the responses were quite extreme."
Nevin says, "One young woman was very hysterical after she saw it. She was brought up in Germany by a mother who was very conscious of the German burden of World War II."
Because of this, the young woman had a strong reaction to Pomsel's repeated denial of responsibility.
Nevin says the takeaway from A German Life is "a warning''.
"It can happen anywhere and is happening. There's a slippery slope and I think we're on it."
The concepts that gained currency during former US president Donald Trump's term in office of "fake news" and "alternative facts" ring true while watching and thinking about A German Life, she says.
"This play is calling on us to think about reality."
Nevin was 16 when she became part of the first intake at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney in 1959.
Since graduating she has become one of the key figures in Australian show business as a multi-award-winning actor on stage and screen and a director.
She has been artistic director of the Queensland Theatre Company and the Sydney Theatre Company, establishing The STC Actors Company at the latter.
Last year, in addition to learning A German Life, Nevin did some screen work, including the horror movie Relic with Emily Mortimer (Shutter Island, Mary Poppins Returns).
She's also been filming an American TV comedy, "but I'm not allowed to talk about it".
A German Life will be performed in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. And what's next for Nevin?
"Give me a break!" she says.
A German Life is on at the Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, from May 11-15 at 7.30pm and on May 15 at 2pm and May 16 at 1pm and 6pm. canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2000.