30.01.2025

Truth is a malleable thing

Pat Taylor reviews Erik Kahn Canned goods Southwark Playhouse (ends February 8)

Something might be in the air. I first got a sense of it with the revival of CP Taylor’s Good in 2022, which depicts Germany’s slide into Nazism. Then came Dominique Morisseau’s howl for workers’ solidarity in Skeleton crew, followed by the angry and young season at London’s Almeida Theatre, which included Arnold Wesker’s Roots and a rehearsed reading of John Arden’s anti-war Serjeant Musgrave’s dance. Even Shakespeare’s explorations of republicanism, populism and the violent realities of war were dusted down and given an airing in a Julius Caesar for the WhatsApp and TikTok generation (Southwark Playhouse) and Coriolanus at the National Theatre.

Pan through all that and you arrive at Erik Kahn’s Canned goods, which has made its UK premiere at Southwark Playhouse.¹ It tells the story of one of Heinrich Himmler’s ‘red flag’ operations - the staging of a Polish attack on a German radio station in the Poland-Germany border town of Gleiwitz. ‘Operation Konserve’ (hence the play’s title) was a strategy to manufacture fake acts of aggression by Polish soldiers against the Germans in order to placate the British with the claim that a Nazi attack on Poland was a deserved retaliation and so keep them off Hitler’s back.

The ‘fake news’ scenario is all too familiar, as is the bending of truth to fit an agenda by omitting facts and emphasising others, whether by individuals or the media. The BBC, which makes a guest appearance at the end of the play, when a newscaster gives a radio report of the Polish soldiers’ incursion, currently stands accused by some employees of downplaying aspects of Israel’s war on Gaza.² It denies the allegation, of course, and is considering suing Owen Jones over his claims of bias. Nevertheless, it would not take many minutes to find examples of misleading information in the news, and Khan’s play plants on people responsibility for questioning misinformation and holding governments to account.

Canned goods revolves around questions, inquisitions and self-reflections. It is a 90-minute performance, played ‘in the round’ with action and dialogue at times leaking into the audience, thereby making us complicit in the operation, which we are made uncomfortably aware of by the play’s form as a ‘play within a play’. Not only are we watching Canned goods performed by actors: we are also watching Alfred Naujocks - an SS major under orders from Himmler to select ‘the right men for the job’ - concoct his own charade, as he picks his pieces, preps them and positions them just as he needs for the Gleiwitz affray.

This is a performance, Gleiwitz was a performance, and what else is too? So do not be fooled and question what you see, the audience is continually reminded.

Canned goods begins the day before the Gleiwitz attack on August 31 1939, telling the story through three men, who, unknown to them, are pawns in Himmler’s game of strategy. In the ‘Everyman’ joke trope of ‘There was an Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman …’, here we have the Jewish philosopher (prophet of doom), the Catholic farmer (with childlike innocence and bewilderment) and the chipper (‘I’m anything you want me to be’) thief.

These are three very different men, but, as major Naujocks says, also alike in “being special” and bound together by their shared “destiny with the Third Reich”.

On the surface they are stereotypes, but, as each one voices their inner struggle with impending death, they reveal some complexity and flaws that come with being human. Birnbaum, the Jewish professor, has a shameful secret; Kruger, the thief, tells of the roots of his chauvinism, and Honiok, the devout farmer is, Saint Francis of Assisi-like, concerned about the welfare of his animals - possibly more than he has been about the disappearances of his fellow countrymen and women.

Perhaps Kahn also meant them to represent different characteristics of a single person, and the journey of reactions they might travel through in the face of a state machine that is so much bigger than themselves: questioning and fighting against developments they see happening around them, collaborating in the hope of staying alive, and finally resigning to fate.

The state gaslighting begins before the play has even started. As people arrive, find their seats and make themselves comfortable, major Naujocks stalks the room, making eye contact, smiling, asking how they are, how is the drink and how are the crisps. This is a dress rehearsal of what is to come, of what will be done by the smiling devil before us.

The action begins with farmer Honiok’s imprisonment. He has no idea why he has been detained in the middle of the night. He says he is “not political, but can’t help asking questions about what’s been happening”. Naujocks enters the cell to question him, feigning a friendly manner and leading Honiok to believe this is all a big mistake.

“But why am I here? Why am I special?” asks Honiok. Naujocks answers in riddles, but the reality will dawn on the farmer over the coming hours: because he lives alone and no-one will miss him or report the fact that he has disappeared. As Naujocks’s game of illusion develops, he returns many times to sit in the centre of the room, circled by the prisoners, circled by the audience. Naujock holds court, dictating the rules of his game and manipulating the protagonists. On each visit to the men (they share a cell, but are kept separate from other prisoners) he starts a game of ‘question and answer’. Each of the prisoners is allowed to ask something, but the major’s answers are examples of clever obfuscation.

In the final question-time session, Naujocks grows tired and irritable of the game and for a few seconds the mask of friendly jollity slips. But he collects himself to allow one last question from the thief, Kruger. There is a long pause, while the other two prisoners - and the audience - silently implore him to ask the one that really matters. But Kruger falters (he has previously admitted to being “not as clever” as Birnbaum and Honiok) and desperately spurts out, “Will I die?” Naujock walks out in disgust, not even attempting an answer. Birnbaum does it instead: of course you will; you are human and that is inevitable.

From then the action picks up and the final pieces are put into place for the fake radio station attack. But that is not the end of the questioning. Naujock addresses the audience and we squirm under his glare after letting such atrocities happen under our watch.

If one of the functions of art is to bring awareness, open our minds and stimulate intellectual exploration, then Canned goods has that potential - to spur a change in attitude to the theatre of war and its coverage in the media. I detect a preference for dramas that demand we look deeper into the ‘facts’ we are daily presented with, and our role as a social collective. The problem is, it could be they are just preaching to the converted.

Nevertheless, it is a timely reminder: question everything.

1. For more details, see southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/canned-goods.↩︎

2. See, for example, novaramedia.com/2025/01/09/bbc-exec-downplayed-israel-plausible-genocide-ruling-to-dismayed-colleagues.↩︎