At London's Old Vic, 'Camp Siegfried' probes American Nazis

London's Old Vic Theatre is reopening at full capacity for the first time since the pandemic began

LONDON -- What could be more American than summer camp? It has fresh air, sailing, cookouts — and, in Bess Wohl’s new play, swastikas.

“Camp Siegfried” is based on a real-life camp on Long Island in the 1930s that indoctrinated young German-Americans into Nazi ideology. The play has its opening night Friday at London’s Old Vic Theatre, the venue’s first show to full-capacity audiences since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Photos from the era show brown shirt-wearing teenagers parading with Nazi flags, 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Manhattan. Like many Americans, Wohl was unaware of that piece of hidden history — until she found herself pandemic-stranded in a rental house on Long Island, close to the site of the camp.

“It was the pandemic, I was home and I just got really obsessed with the fact that there had been this camp 10 minutes away from where we were staying," said the New York-born writer, whose plays include “Small Mouth Sounds” — set in a silent retreat — and the divorce comedy “Grand Horizons,” which had a Broadway run just before the virus struck.