The Love Girl and the Innocent [antikvár]

The audience will walk from a brightly lit foyer into the darkened auditorium. In here the only light comes from a number of tin-plate hooded lanterns which are placed, almost like crowns, on a semicircle of posts right along the edge of the orchestra pit. The posts are quite low, so as not to interfere with the audience's view of the stage. They are wrapped with barbed wire which vanishes down into the orchestra pit. The centre post carries an indicator to mark the dividing point in the field of observation from the two nearest watch-towers.There are two camp watch-towers standing to the right and to the left of the arch of the stage. Throughout the play the towers are manned by sentries.The curtain rises. It is an ordinary theatre curtain, but is not used again until the end of the play. Behind it there is a second curtain - a length of fabric crudely painted with a poster-like industrial landscape, depicting cheerful, apple-cheeked, muscular men and women working away quite effortlessly. In one corner of the curtain a joyful procession is in progress complete with flowers, children and a portrait of Stalin.To start the show a loudspeaker plays a lively melody from a concertina. It is the march from the film ' The Jolly Fellows'.As the curtain is raised the melody is taken up by an actual concertina-player, sitting quite far back in the stage by the camp gates.Behind the curtain one can hear the harsh sound of a crowbar banged against a metal rail.The camp zone lanterns go out. They are not re-lit until the last scene of the play.