Theatre in Review: Leni's Last Lament (Paradise Factory)Even history's villains deserve a certain respect, and when it comes to twentieth-century history, there are few more riveting troublemakers than Leni Riefenstahl. One of the original multi-hyphenates -- actress, director, producer, and writer -- she is generally regarded as one of cinema's greatest artists. Also, one of the most infamous, thanks to epic documentaries like Triumph of the Will and Olympia, which enshrined the Nazi regime in a gorgeously appointed fascist Valhalla. At the very least, a morally ambiguous figure, more likely an enthusiastic enabler of war and genocide, she commands our attention because she accomplished so much. Each stunning frame of Riefenstahl's films -- processions of chiseled athletes embodying the Aryan ideal or masses of young people illuminated in cathedrals of light -- poses troubling questions. It's a truism today that artists are essentially moral or, at the very least, well-meaning. It's certainly true that the theatre and film industries traditionally lean to the left, making for a certain unanimity of viewpoint; the only consistently conservative voice at work today is David Mamet, whose MAGA ravings find few takers. But what about a deeply gifted filmmaker firmly devoted to the wrong side? An active ally of arguably the worst regime in human history? Like so many Germans of her generation, Riefenstahl was possessed of that deft forgetfulness that allowed her to airbrush from her personal history any complicity in the murders of millions. It helped that she outlived the Third Reich by several decades, forever trying to revive her feature-film career while pursuing new projects. Accompanied by a lover four decades her junior, she was a reckless risk-taker who time and again cheated death. Among her later capers were photographic studies of Nuba tribes of Southern Sudan (which, depending on your point of view, are stunningly beautiful or another example of fascist body worship), and an underwater photography project taken up in her eighties, when she took up scuba diving. The 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (sadly unavailable at the moment) portrays a woman of almost terrifying vitality even as she nears the century mark. (She survived a helicopter crash at 97, finally passing away at 101.) All of which makes it hard to understand the approach taken by playwright Gil Kofman in Leni's Last Lament. The piece is a satirical cabaret that imagines Leni as a blowsy, road-company version of Lola-Lola, the temptress played by her arch-rival, Marlene Dietrich, in The Blue Angel. Clad in a bustier that the young Madonna might covet, framed in blatantly false blond tresses, and wielding a feather boa to vamp the audience, she pleads her innocence with wisecracks and song fragments. What follows is ninety minutes of comically inept damage control. Kofman's point appears to be that Riefenstahl's romance with the Third Reich wasn't a patch on her enduring self-adoration. Complaining about those who would tarnish her reputation, she snaps, "What they did to me was worse than what the Allies did to Dresden." (Nice, Leni, nice.) She insists that Josef von Sternberg begged her to take the lead in The Blue Angel, adding, "But no way was I going to let him Jew me down on my salary." Madonna, she reports, wanted to make a film about her, but, she notes dismissively, "She already ruined Evita, I wasn't going to let her make a mess of Leni." (Jodie Markell, who plays Leni, does a pretty good imitation of Jodie Foster, who also pursued the idea of a feature film biography.) In the most bizarre passage, she describes a dream in which, directing Triumph of the Will, she bends the entire Nazi establishment to her will, sexually assaulting them. ("They all want me, desire me.") Well, a girl can dream... But, surely, none of this is right. In her early films, Riefenstahl was less a Dietrich than an early-1930s Katharine Hepburn, an athletic go-getter with bobbed hair and a boyish profile. Whatever means she used to get ahead -- the script teases the idea that she might briefly have been Hitler's lover, which, I think, is unlikely -- she combined executive ability with a singular artistic vision. She was organized, disciplined, and a self-starter; her entire life was a rejection of the femme fatale role, on screen and off. What fascinates about her is the vigor and skill, paired with a stunning amorality, with which she pursued her muse. The faded chanteuse onstage at the Paradise Garage, murmuring bits of "Those Were the Days" and reframing a certain Frank Loesser tune as "Once in Love with Leni," has little or nothing to do with the woman who left her mark (or her stain) on the previous century. Markell, a fine performer in a wide variety of works, doesn't seem at home here; certainly, her breathy delivery doesn't make the most of the script's sometimes mordant points. She has her moments, whether noting, enviously, that without her example,Star Wars would never have been made or tossing Nazi armbands into the audience, noting that in her day, they were "handed out like bathroom passes." (She jealously compares herself to D. W. Griffith, insisting that her films were as influential as The Birth of a Nation. It's a charge that is queasily on target: Each of them helped to codify the language of cinema in films that are repugnant masterpieces.) Still, thanks to the script and Richard Caliban's direction, she is at a disadvantage, grappling with an idea of her character that doesn't feel accurate. No set designer is credited, but the action unfolds in a sort of cinematic bardo with strips of celluloid hanging from the ceiling, film canisters piled on the floor, and posters advertising The Blue Angel and other features from the early 1930s. Joey Moro's projections, which include footage from Riefenstahl's films, are sometimes more compelling than anything else onstage; they certainly give one a sense of her extraordinary talent. (Moro also provided noirish lighting.) The musician Spiff Wiegand accompanies Markell on accordion and violin. Somebody ought to write a truly searching play about Riefenstahl, but it would most likely be a monumental effort, requiring a playwright with the deep vision of a Tom Stoppard or J. T. Rogers. Leni's Last Lament has a way of diminishing its subject that proves unhelpful. Kofman also tosses in references to Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, and the Kennedy Center, as if the Internet weren't already flooded with Donald Trump-Hitler comparisons. But the biggest problem with Leni's Last Lament is that it isn't nearly as imaginative as its subject. --David Barbour 
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