Theater Review: Sense of Decency

                         Sense of Decency

It’s difficult to even consider “decency” and Nazism in the same sentence, but that’s what you’ll get with North Coast Rep’s new play “Sense of Decency.”

North Coast Repertory Theatre’s artistic director David Ellenstein read Jack El-Hai’s nonfiction book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” a few years ago and found its theatrical possibilities irresistible. It’s about an American psychiatrist sent to interview jailed Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring in jail, before he killed himself with cyanide the night before his scheduled execution.

Not the sort of thing you’d usually find in a lovely afternoon at the theater? To say the least. But playwright Jake Broder adapted El-Hai’s book into the play you’ll see in NCRT’s latest offering, “Sense of Decency,” playing through May 12 at North Coast Rep.

A little, um, difficult to watch? Yep. But just consider what you would say to Göring, if somebody had asked you to interview him. It is a bit fascinating to think about. The play posits a psychiatrist (you know, the white-jacketed type) named Douglas McGlashan Kelley (and played with great amusement by Brendan Ford) being sent to interview Göring. Kelley is reported as saying his fascination with Göring was that he seemed amoral rather than immoral, even narcissistic.

But the good doc doesn’t get any new, strange or startling admissions from the

Nazi awaiting execution.

The play also includes Kelley’s new wife Dukie (played by Lucy Davenport, who also plays Göring’s wife Emmy). Of course, the wives also have things to say but (surprise!) get little chance to say them.

Göring is not above making fun of the American treatment of oppressed people here (such as native Americans) and gets a giggle out of the fact that “you actually had a war fighting for the right to keep slavery going!”

But “Sense of Decency” is neither the topic nor sort of play I would be hankering to see. This one goes on a bit too much and is both too long and too choppy to keep me sufficiently riveted. 

The details

“Sense of Decency” plays through May 12, 2024 at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive in Solana Beach.

Shows Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.

Tickets: (858)481-1055 or northcoastrep.org