REVIEW: Troubled Love by William Lyons at Etcetera Theatre 23 – 29 March 2026

‘Though seemingly about the relationship between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, the play has very little interest in exploring this question.’ ★★

It’s one of the most intriguing intellectual relationships of the 20th Century; the love shared between Hannah Arendt, the famous political philosopher who fled her native Germany to escape persecution as a Jew, and Martin Heidegger, a metaphysicist who sought to overturn all of Western philosophy and passionately embraced the Nazi party to do so. How these two could be passionately politically opposed while still caring deeply for each other personally is a question that continues to fascinate their biographers and followers to this day.

It’s a shame then that this play, though seemingly about this relationship, has very little interest in exploring this question. Arendt (Zoe Anastassiou) and Heidegger (Matt Metcalfe) do take centre-stage for most of the play, in 4 scenes that play across decades of their lives, but there’s precious little interest in who they are as people or how their love has come about and persisted. Instead, each scene sees Arendt or Heidegger explicitly state the time and location of their meeting before listing off historical trivia and diving into surface level sparring about current events relevant to that scene.

At no point do we delve into their love (a love that is stated and rarely shown) and at no point do we delve into their rich philosophical work. Crucially, neither character feels like a real person with wants and desires, instead each feels more akin to a summary of an encyclopedia article, with plenty of exposition and facts but little discernible motivation or substance.

Heidegger fares slightly better than Arendt, as he attempts some form of justification for the early rise of the Nazi party only to show regret and sorrow post-war, while Arendt stays entirely static as a character. It feels an injustice on some level that two real-life figures with such amazing lives should be reduced to what feel like caricatures. The one saving grace here are the performances; Anastassiou and Metcalfe are strong actors who give the best possible life one could to this material. They simply deserve better material.

Beyond the failings of the core narrative, there’s the questionable inclusion of intervals between each scene of the two philosophers, which almost take up as much time as the main narrative. The pattern of these intervals features two dancers played by Ilona Sidorova and Roman Thornton, who each time play out a lengthy choreographed mime (often fairly raunchy) followed by a suggestive love song from Elizabeth McNally sung live through a microphone. Neither style of interval felt that it added much to the show, and if their presence had to remain one style alone would do.

Additionally on the night there were strong technical faults that eroded any atmosphere the play could hope to build. A consistently irritating buzzing noise could be heard whenever the microphone wasn’t in use by McNally and the projected video to the back of the stage had its play button and general user interface visible throughout. (Naturally it’s hard to become absorbed in a historical narrative when one can see a mouse cursor flying around behind the actors).

A special note on that same projected video; while largely unremarkable and perhaps unneeded, once the images of Nazi Germany began to be shown things took a bad turn. Here, next to propaganda footage of Nazi rallies and soldiers, images of contemporary figures appeared to be spliced in through what appeared to be AI imagery. At best this was a distraction from the action of the play, and at worst was simply in very poor taste. The show would gain much without these being present.

Creatives:

Written by William Lyons

Directed by Victor Sobchak

Choreography by Ilona Sidorova

Runs: 23rd March – 29th March 2026

Box Office: https://www.etceteratheatrecamden.com/events/troubled-love