Robert Icke’s cunning adaptation of The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2007 Academy Award–winning exploration of the terrors and compromises of life under the Stasi’s East German thumb, is a daring exception to what is becoming the boulevard formula of adapting hit films for the stage—where the public is essentially paying not to play, to encounter what they already know. Icke, who is a generational talent, finds new ways to take the audience on a journey to the extraordinary.
Here, in the play’s bold ironic first beat, Icke grabs the audience by its lapels. A tall, austere Stasi captain—Gerd Wiesler (the subtle Stephen Dillane)—stands before us in his gray military uniform, then pauses. “Are you ready to listen? Are you ready to be an audience?” he commands. Who is he talking to? To us? To a class of trainee spies? The lines hang ambiguously in the air, at once announcing Icke’s ambition to think outside the box and Wiesler’s loyalist duty to ensure that the citizens stay locked inside it. “We are under attack, at all times, from all sides. Your work is vital, your enemies are the enemies of socialism, keep your attention on what matters,” Wiesler reminds his Stasi trainees at the end of the scene, establishing for them and us his bona fides as a true G.D.R. believer.