John Bell’s Diplomacy makes new connections in 2019

John Bell’s play Diplomacy is back at the Ensemble for a second season and it’s more poignant than ever.

John Bell and John Gaden in DIPLOMACY in 2018. The show premieres for its second season on June 21 at the Ensemble Theatre.

When the play Diplomacy comes back for it’s second season on June 21 at the Ensemble Theatre, it will be even more pointed than last year.

The first filmic iteration of this story, of dissuading Hitler loyalists to blow up significant Parisian buildings, was Is Paris Burning? (1966). This came to fruition in April when Paris’ cultural centre, Notre Dame, burned, far from the hands of Hitler.

Diplomacy is about the importance of protecting culture, a sentiment that was felt when the world mourned Notre Dame.

Notre Dame cathedral burning in Paris on April 15, 2019. Image credit: AP Photo/Vanessa Pena.

The historical-fiction of Diplomacy captures audience’s imaginations, which is likely why it has returned for a second season. People know that Hitler ordered the city of Paris to be destroyed but not much more, according to the play’s director John Bell.

When Bell came across the French play by Cyril Gély, which was turned into a film in 2014 and shown at Cannes, it also captured his imagination. He wondered how much of the story was fact. But he said it’s impossible to know what words were spoken between Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling and German General Dietrich von Choltitz in 1944. The private conversation, set at Hôtel Meurice here, had no witnesses.

John Bell as General Deitrich von Choltitz in DIPLOMACY at the Ensemble Theatre.

“It’s pretty much imagined. It probably was not as simple as this. It’s a distilled version of what happened. We know that Hitler ordered Paris to be destroyed and we know that Raoul Nordling and Dietrich von Choltitz had a conversation.”

But the imagined story has moral underpinnings. “It’s a good exercise in diplomacy and how to dissuade someone from a crucial mission,” he said.

For Mr Bell “theatre is a living thing”. The second season of this play then is about fine-tuning. The cast watches a video of performances from last season in order to “polish, simplify and make things more pointed”.

“We’ve had three weeks of rehearsals. We’re fine-tuning and adjusting. We’ve made quite a few changes to the movements … We are valuing the opportunity to work on it again … (a play is) rarely finished. There’s always room for improvement,” he said.

John Bell and John Gaden in DIPLOMACY at the Ensemble Theatre in 2018.

Even Diplomacy’s translator, Julie Rose, who converted Gély’s play to English, sat in on rehearsals initially and changed words here and there. Bell still keeps in touch with her, and said she is open to alterations. The words were not just written down and set in stone.

Although Bell has been directing theatre for 40 years, from Shakespeare to opera, musicals to new Australian plays, he said: “I don’t generally direct things as naturalistic as this. I usually direct more poetic productions like Shakespeare. This is very much a scaled-down piece. I work on a small scale and on the detail. It’s like working on a film or a television piece.”