‘The Arsonists’ play review: Absurdist theater takes on evils of capitalism

I strongly suspect that when the Swiss-German playwright Max Frisch wrote The Arsonists during the 1950s, he fully intended it to be mounted in a wildly over-the-top manner. This was, after all, during the heyday of the Theater of the Absurd, and the astute theatergoer can discern the influences of Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, as well as Brecht (whom Frisch met), throughout this one-act play about pyromaniacs wreaking havoc on a beleaguered town. Interestingly, Frisch wrote The Arsonists the same year Ray Bradbury’s fireman-themed dystopian masterpiece Fahrenheit 451 was published.

After a chorus of firefighters and their leader (Seamus Mulcahy) enforce and lay the strict fire safety rules down on we audience members, enter Gottlieb Biedermann (Brian Wallace), a loudmouthed capitalist who has made his fortune by peddling hair tonic (which means, but of course, that Biedermann is bald and wears an ill-fitting wig) and by, apparently, swindling one of his employees, Knechtling (an offstage presence, although his wife, played by Flor de Maria Chahua, who doubles in the chorus). Biedermann is attended by his much put-upon domestic servant, Anna (Jazelle Villanueva), as her ill-tempered boss rails against the fire setters, demanding that “They should hang the lot of them!” (or words to that effect). 

The previous night at a watering hole, blustery Biedermann also made his vengeful demands to hold those responsible for the flames publicly accountable. As the play gets underway on a rainy day, claiming to have been impressed by Biedermann’s volubility and moral steadfastness, Josef Schmitz (Trevor Jonathan Lown, who also has an associate producer credit) shows up at the businessman’s home uninvited and unwelcome. Over and against Biedermann’s objections, the homeless man not only worms his way into the capitalist’s dining room, but to staying upstairs in the attic.

The gruff Schmitz identifies himself as an unemployed wrestler (in Frisch’s original he and his comrade were traveling salesmen), and he soon smuggles his collaborator, William Eisenring (Liam Rhodes, who likewise has an associate producer credit), into the attic where the crafty, daffy duo conspire together. Eisenring displays a certain panache, especially with regard to culinary matters, as he was a former waiter—that is, until he was placed behind bars, where he met—you guessed it!—Schmitz.     

Biedermann and his wife, Babette (Tessa Auberjonois), become increasingly unsettled by the presence of the unwanted house guests in their well-appointed home. They suspect that the uncouth, scheming Schmitz and Eisenring have something up their sleeves. But despite the evidence that amasses before their own eyes, the previously big-mouthed Biedermann is unable to give the pair of ne’er-do-wells the old heave-ho. Why not? Well, it could be argued that the successful capitalist just wants to be considered one of the boys.

Frisch called The Arsonists “A morality play without a moral,” which is pretty witty. But I don’t buy that. One would have to be preternaturally stupid not to see what Schmitz and Eisenring are up to, and if this production was performed in the naturalist style, it would defy belief and stretch credulity to the breaking point. But I believe that the Zurich-born Frisch, who witnessed the Nazis’ rise to power right next door to neutral Switzerland, was actually getting at something quite specific. The playbill for The Arsonists may say that the “Setting” is “Anytime, Anyplace,” but the ticket buyer can’t help but note that most of the dramatis personae have Germanic names.

In terms of style and tactics, during the early 1930s the Nazis were an unsavory, coarse lot that regularly used brute force to impose their will upon others. They came from outside the realm of “respectable society”; Hitler was born into a lower-class social stratum and became a no-talent wannabe painter (even worse, he was a psychopathic madman). Yet, top German industrialists, members of the establishment, such as Krupp, Thyssen, and I.G. Farben, financially bankrolled the Nazis and enabled them to seize power. These charter members of the ruling class thought that they could use the distasteful Nazis for their own ends and that they could control Hitler and his henchmen. But, since this is a theater review and not a history treatise, suffice it to say that once Hitler’s horse was outside the proverbial barn, there was no stopping him as he set about lighting the world—and the concentration camp ovens—on fire.  

While my theory may explain Frisch’s original intent, it doesn’t necessarily clarify why it is being revived now as the first offering of the producing collective the Firebugs, which Luke Harlan, co-Emmy nominated for producing the brilliant HBO series The Gilded Age, co-founded along with cast members Lown and Rhodes. In the playbill’s director’s note, Harlan wrote: “The smoke of WWII was beginning to clear and [The Arsonists] grew out of an attempt to understand how ordinary people could see catastrophe approaching and still find a hundred ways to accommodate it, to let it in through the front door. Nearly seventy-five years later, the question feels just as urgent.”

Indeed. In the last couple of years there has been a trend of L.A.’s live stages reviving classics of the Theater of the Absurd: The Geffen Playhouse presented Beckett’s (that valiant veteran of the French anti-Nazi Resistance!) Waiting for Godot; A Noise Within Ionesco’s Exit the King; and The Actors’ Gang Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists. 

And now we have The Arsonists. It seems that some of L.A.’s socially aware theaters are trying to make sense of the everyday absurdity and buffoonery of the Trump regime through the probing lens of the Theater of the Absurd’s exemplars. An embodiment in one being of all of the evils of capitalism, Trump appears to be a mentally ill imbecile who requires an inventive mode of expression in order to be understood. He is the opposite man because his class interests have pitted him during his entire wretched existence against the well-being of ordinary people, so in order to benefit himself he has no empathy and always inevitably says and does what’s contrary to what’s best for the majority. In their wildest imaginations, no Beckett, Ionesco, Frisch or Dürrenmatt could ever have conjured up such a totally preposterous character (well, maybe Brecht—on his best day, after lots of schnaps). If such a character were set loose on the boards, nobody could ever believe that such an abnormal freak of nature could exist—let alone become president of a country that deludes itself into pretending it’s a democracy… (Maybe Biedermann should sell The Donald some of his hair tonic?)

Just as I.G. Farben, et al, empowered Hitler, then thought they could reign him in, some of today’s tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and others who attended his second inauguration are likewise holding their noses and backing Trump. As well as those law firms, universities and corporations who allowed themselves to be extorted, rather than to fight in court against Trump’s protection rackets. Frisch is warning against this type of appeasement and capitulation, in any way, as history eerily repeats itself.  

From the firemen to the fire starters, most members of The Arsonists’ cast wildly overact—but this is in keeping with Frisch’s intent and the tenor of his unbelievable tale, and it worked well for me. Harlan—who has a strong stage as well as TV background, ranging from Manhattan’s The Public Theater to London’s Old Vic, and co-writing/performing in home/sick inspired by the Weather Underground—artfully directs his thesps on the multi-level, modernist set wrought by scenic designer Stephen Gifford. A possible exception to the (deliberate) overacting is Tessa Auberjonois as the long-suffering wife who isn’t completely hoodwinked by the incendiary interlopers who have hornswaggled their way into her home. Tessa has a long list of stage and screen credits, including originating the role of Joan Rivers in the bioplay about the comedienne (who, apparently, James Madison had in mind when he drafted the First Amendment). 

I should also mention lighting designer Jared Sayeg and sound designer Drew Sensue-Weinstein for their awards-worthy special effects, as well as cite Molly Kirschenbaum, who in addition to being in the chorus plays the Doctor of Philosophy, who takes a completely ineffective stand against the fire raisers by writing an overly academic manifesto. I enjoyed Frisch’s sly wry wit but disagree with his assessment about the morality play he wrote: There is a moral to his story. And that moral is to always resist the authoritarian extremists, by any means necessary. In other words, ordinary people can’t behave like a Biedermann—at some point, in this ongoing struggle of good versus evil, every one of us is going to have to stand up and act, well, like Spiderman.  

The Arsonists is a visiting production at the Skylight Theatre presented by the Firebugs and runs at 8:00 p.m. Thursday – Saturday; 5:00 p.m. Saturday; 2:00 p.m. Sunday through Sept 20, 2026. Skylight Theatre is located at 1816 ½ North Vermont, L.A., 90027. Reservations can be made here.

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