SHIP OF FOOLS is a historical novel from around 1960, made into a large-cast ensemble movie in 1965. The film depicts a range of characters on a ship from Mexico to Bremerhaven after Hitler's election, in 1933. (Some are ardent Nazis).
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Create a fictional (humorous, satirical scenario) as follows. When SHIP of FOOLS film rights were up for grabs, an alternative producer/investor was Nigel Klemp, who would have used Petter Lorre as the star. When they lost the deal, they nonetheless came up with a madcap scheme. SHIP OF FOOLS would be presented on the Brooklyn stage, with all the parts played by Peter Lorre (using a range of voices, wigs, costumes, etc). Describe a skeptical critic who is reviewing the performance he has just seen, as well, as giving his readers the back story of how it came about.
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Review: Ship of Fools, Starring Peter Lorre, Also Starring Peter Lorre, and Featuring Peter Lorre
By Wendell Grump, Brooklyn Herald-Skeptic
April 12, 1967
BROOKLYN — There are evenings in the theater one remembers for their genius, others for their audacity, and still others because, midway through Act Two, one simply cannot believe one’s seat hasn’t been engulfed by fire to end the ordeal. Such was my experience last night at the St. Vitus Playhouse in downtown Brooklyn, where an alternate history of cinema collided with community theater, vanity production, and avant-garde exhaustion in the form of Nigel Klemp’s all-Peter Lorre stage adaptation of Ship of Fools.
The Backstory (More Interesting Than the Play):
In the early 1960s, when the film rights to Ship of Fools were up for acquisition, British investor-turned-producer Nigel Klemp (formerly of the failed West End production Kafka! The Musical!) sought to mount his own visionary version starring the inimitable Peter Lorre. According to lore (no pun intended), Klemp envisioned Lorre not merely as the lead but as every character aboard the doomed vessel — from the Jewish intellectual to the anti-Semitic officer, from the disillusioned countess to the lonely dwarf, all roles performed with Lorre’s signature mixture of wheeze, glare, and existential perspiration.
When the film rights slipped through Klemp’s fingers and landed, as history records, with Stanley Kramer and an all-star cast, Klemp did not take this setback as a sign from the gods of common sense. No, he doubled down. He bought a decommissioned ferry in Sheepshead Bay, renamed it “The S.S. Hubris,” and workshopped his vision there, employing Peter Lorre as his one-man ensemble. Rehearsals reportedly began with optimism and ended with Lorre muttering “They told me Berlin was cold, but this is worse.”
After Lorre’s untimely death in 1964, Klemp, ever resourceful, pressed on with a cast of Lorre impersonators culled from local bars and a suspiciously underfunded mime college in Hoboken. Following a series of cease-and-desist letters from Lorre’s estate, Klemp scaled down further: one actor, one wig rack, 27 characters. The result is what I endured last night.
The Performance (If One Must Call It That):
Our lone performer, Mr. Jasper Figge, enters as the ship’s captain: a sort of rheumy-eyed, hunched Lorre-by-way-of-Groucho. Within minutes, he is also the doctor, the dancer, the countess, and the Jew, each marked by a different accent, hat, or limp. A bell signals each character change; by the third clang, I began to dread the bell as Pavlov must have dreaded his dog.
One admires Mr. Figge’s stamina if not his diction. His German officer seemed indistinguishable from his Jewish scholar except that one of them smoked with more menace. His ingenue, Helga, was delivered in a falsetto I can only describe as “Minnesotan banshee.” Throughout, the set wobbled. So did Mr. Figge.
Highlights included a sequence where Figge, as both Rieber and the Jewish professor, debated anti-Semitism with himself for twenty full minutes, sweating profusely and shifting hats with a desperation not seen since Waiting for Godot was staged in Esperanto. The audience, numbering perhaps 14 (including this critic), seemed equally divided between confused loyalty and quiet horror.
Critical Verdict:
There is a perverse brilliance in the act of staging a three-hour, one-man, twenty-seven-character adaptation of Ship of Fools in Brooklyn, all under the haunted shadow of Peter Lorre’s mannerisms. Klemp’s vision — or derangement — has finally come to fruition, long after the world stopped asking for it.
I cannot recommend it, but I cannot forget it.
⭐⭐ (Two stars: one for ambition, one for audacity.)
Postscript: I am told Klemp’s next project is “Grand Hotel: The Musical” performed entirely by a troupe of trained crows. I await developments with dread.
