Tale of terror and choice brings actress back to the stage

Elizabeth Hawthorne in Blonde Poison, one of the most intriguing roles the veteran actress has played.

In another life, Stella Goldschlag might have followed a dream and travelled to the United States to become a "frippy frappy" jazz singer but she was born at the wrong moment in history.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Stella was the only child of a middle-class assimilated Jewish family. As their circumstances worsened and attempts to leave Germany failed, they were stranded in Berlin and witnessed friends and neighbours being loaded onto trains never to be seen again.

The Goldschlags were arrested in 1943; tortured by the Gestapo, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Stella made what many of us would see as a deal with the devil. She agreed to work with the Gestapo as a "catcher" of other Jews in exchange for her life and the lives of her family.

"She was a young woman who faced a terrible choice and to hear her story makes us all think, 'what would I have done?" says actress Elizabeth Hawthorne, who portrays Stella in the play Blonde Poison.

While Hawthorne is a stage and screen veteran, this is her first solo show. She wanted to do it because it deals with ideas about choice, atonement and consequences which she sees as highly relevant today.

"Life can be completely random; the times Stella lived in created the circumstances and situation she found herself in," says Hawthorne. "She could have had a completely different life and she could have made a different decision but once she made this pact, she seems to have taken to her task with a degree of relish. That's possibly the thing that's harder to forgive; to understand."

If there's a message to take away from it, Hawthorne says it's that we all must live with the consequences of our decisions and we never know when we may be faced with difficult choices.

"Look at what's going in the world today; in places like Syria and Nigeria with Boko Haram. This kind of insanity does not go away. How many people are living this kind of existence?"

So effective was Stella, the Gestapo nicknamed her blonde poison - the name of writer Gail Louw's play which has been performed in Sydney, Melbourne and London. It is set decades after the war when Stella, who served 10 years in a Soviet prison camp in the late 1940s and 50s, agrees to be interviewed about her past.

Director Paul Gittins saw Blonde Poison in London and wanted to bring it to New Zealand if he could find the right person to play Stella. He thought immediately of Hawthorne. Both agree it's the kind of provocative theatre they like to make and watch because it's engaging and complex.

It will be the first play produced by Plumb Theatre, which Gittins is setting up with fellow actor David Aston. He says they'd like to stage two productions a year, becoming recognised for theatre which can be performed in smaller venues with smaller casts but is large in the breadth and depth of its ideas.

"It's about finding plays which draw an audience in because of beautiful writing and lively characters and which look at the kind of very human experiences everyone can recognise," says Gittins.

Lowdown:
What: Blonde Poison
Where & when: Herald Theatre, Tuesday 22 August - Saturday Sept 2