Mrs Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library review – interrogating Hannah Arendt

Traverse theatre, Edinburgh An encounter in a police cell with a Nazi officer could have been the end of the political theorist, but Jenny Lyn Bader’s play has little feel for the dramatic The Mrs Stern of the title is the married name of Hannah Arendt, the political theorist much remembered for her “banality of evil” insight. Jenny Lyn Bader sets her play not, as you might expect, in the Prussian state library, but in a police cell where Arendt has been hauled in for questioning not long after the Reichstag fire. The Nazi apparatus has extended its remit to political crimes and she, what with her bookish ways, errant husband and associations with Jewish intellectuals, has come under scrutiny...