Play review – “The Andersonville Trial” by Saul Levitt

Apparently most POW camps during the Civil War were festy cesspits but Andersonville was particularly horrible, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Union prisoners. There is a rich tradition in war crime stories – Breaker Morant, Judgement at Nuremberg, Blood Oath. Like the others this touches a lot on the morality of “only following orders” and big political cover ups and “no man is an island”. But it remains effective, powerful stuff, and the accused warden, Wirz, is a terrific character: pompous, whiny, self-important. In the end its revealed his main problem was he was just a really bad bureaucrat (he couldn’t do anything because he wasn’t “authorised”.) His defence counsel is a really good lawyer, better than the prosecutor to be honest (who gnashes his teeth a bit too often – though George C Scott played the role on Broadway and you can imagine him doing it brilliantly.).