Truth in Government.(Democracy)(Theater Review)

When British playwright Michael Frayn first visited Berlin in 1972, German Chancellor Willy Brandt was at the height of his popularity, having just won the Nobel Prize for his efforts to reconcile West Germany with the Soviet bloc. Two years later, Brandt's abrupt resignation painfully captured Frayn's imagination. His new play, "Democracy," which premiered last week at London's National Theatre (through Dec. 30), revolves around the powerful friendship between Brandt and his close personal assistant Gunter Guillaume, the Soviet spy who ultimately caused Brandt's downfall. "I find it endlessly astonishing and moving that Germany managed to recover from a situation of such physical and moral degradation since the war," Frayn says. "Everything had been corrupted by the Nazis, and somehow out of that, thanks to great political skill, emerged one of the most stable countries in Europe."

The tension generated by Germany's tangled politics gives Frayn's fast- paced play plenty of fizz. East Germany had been sealed behind the Berlin wall in 1961, severing family and cultural bonds. West Germans bitterly opposed losing nearly a quarter of their country's territory in the east. Brandt's ability to overcome this division changed the face of Europe, contributing to detente in the cold war and, eventually, the downfall of East Germany and the Soviet empire. Roger Allam as Brandt gives a brilliantly nuanced depiction of a charismatic political leader, one moment basking in public applause, the next ...