Ödön von Horváth requires an introduction, for he is not well-known outside the German-speaking world.

The Austro-Hungarian, born in 1901, wrote more than 20 plays in his short life — he was killed by a falling branch at the age of 37 — and was a shrewd documentarist of the rise of Nazi Germany. His main champion today is Christopher Hampton; Judgment Day is the fourth of his plays that Hampton has translated.

Although this is not a studiously political piece, it is obliquely concerned with fascism. Von Horváth’s characters are not the rural workers of the 19-century German folk drama but aspirational figures trying to claw their way towards respectability. Class, community and civic duty are its salty concerns.

The main character in Judgment Day is Thomas Hudetz, the admired and punctilious stationmaster in an obscure Austrian town. A momentary lapse — perhaps his fault, perhaps not — results in a train crash that causes a large number of fatalities. It seems likely that he will be rumbled but possible that blame will be laid elsewhere. 

While the title may suggest that this is a play that takes an exact moral position, what makes it interesting is its moral blurriness. Our sympathies are nudged first one way then another: stable notions of truth and responsibility are unsettled.

The strengths of the production are James Macdonald’s detailed direction and Miriam Buether’s technically ingenious design, elucidated by Neil Austin’s clever lighting. Only the excessive use of dry ice rankles.

The performances are robust — the best is that of Joseph Millson, hauntedly sensitive as Hudetz. But the play itself has defects. As Martin Esslin has explained, von Horváth’s genius is his “use of language to explore the use of language, and the ravages of its misuse”. While Hampton’s version is adroit, this theme evaporates in translation.

Furthermore, the otherworldly ending (the precise nature of which it would be crass to disclose) is neither necessary nor convincing. Judgment Day is an intriguing hybrid of social comedy and noirish entertainment, but lapses into melodrama and in the end a gratuitous supernaturalism. 
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