Vision

Synopsis:

It is November 1918.

The Great War – the war to end all wars – is drawing to a close.

At the Shooting House, in Pasewalk, Pomerania, Dr Edmund Forster – a military psychiatrist – is seeing patients.

One, a blind corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler, draws his attention.

Ostensibly blinded by the effects of mustard gas released into the trenches, a filthy and dishevelled Hitler is a far cry from the man we have come to know from newsreel footage.

Forster soon establishes that Hitler’s blindness is in fact hysterical in origin, but this does not sit well with the notion he has formed of the archetypal malingerer.

Hitler, the winner of an Iron Cross for valour, has proven himself time and time again to be possessed of an almost reckless courage.  So what is the key to his blindness?

Step by step, through an ingenious series of deliberations, Forster deconstructs, then reconstructs the character of Adolf Hitler, ultimately restoring his vision and, at one and the same time, inadvertently creating the man who will one day plunge the world into the most horrific war of all time.

Act Two is set in the Berlin office of the newly-elected Chancellor of the Reich in September 1933.

Dr Edmund Forster has been summoned to the office of the now familiar figure of the Fuhrer in order to establish whether he shares the great man’s vision for Germany’s future.

There is no other man alive who knows about Adolf Hitler what Edmund Forster knows.  This makes him a dangerous individual.  All the more dangerous because, since Hitler’s accession to power, Forster has made several unscheduled trips to destinations outside the Reich in order to meet with foreign colleagues.  Does this make him a traitor?

In an unnerving analysis of the darkest recesses of the human psyche, Vision illuminates a little-known interlude that was to change the face of human history for all time to come.

Character Breakdown:

DR EDMUND FORSTER – Act One:  40 / Act Two:  55
ADOLF HITLER – Act One:  29 / Act Two:  44
ORDERLY / ADJUTANT – May be played by stage manager

Setting
Act One: 21^st October – 19^th November 1918
The Shooting House, Pasewalk (Pomerania)
Act Two: 10^th September 1933
Chancellor’s Office, Berlin

Running-time: 115 minutes.

Excerpt available for download for free.