I gotta be honest, I’m really not in the mood to write about the proliferation of fascism today. Last night I rather foolishly decided that the best way to take my mind off the dread of election night was to stop by the North Wall for The Brief Life and Unexpected Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria, Out of the Forest Theatre’s wittily askance account of the eponymous Bulgarian ruler and his role in saving 50,000 Jewish Bulgarians from the machinations of the Third Reich. You can see, in the cold light of the day after, why this might have been misguided. But honestly, as we gear up to watch the Overton window continue its grim slide rightwards, more people need to feel right now the way I did leaving this production.

The Brief Life and Unexpected Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria has already seen very successful runs at multiple festivals, and the set-up carries your usual Fringey hallmarks - a small ensemble playing multiple roles, minimal staging that favours suggestion over elaborate set pieces, and more than one pointed dig at arts funding (which maybe plays a bit better on festival stages). We meet Joseph Prowen as our eponymous king, channelling David Niven in the gentlemanly élan and easy wit he brings to the role. Boris is about to make uneasy bedfellows with Germany as it conquers Europe in an attempt to consolidate Bulgarian land (and make up for the patchy legacy of his father, Ferdinand I). But as the grip of fascism tightens and the devastating human cost of Nazi capitulation becomes clear, Boris must heed the word of his citizens and turn from appeasement to action.

On the technical side, I was very impressed with the ingenuity the company takes to its stagecraft, especially in the ways musical instruments are incorporated into their propwork. I wouldn’t exactly call this a musical per se, but the cast incorporates Bulgarian and Jewish traditional music (as well as some lo-fi socialist beats to chill and organise to, like Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land’ and Italian protest song ‘Bella Ciao’) into its action with ease, and the cast playing live on stage provides beautifully resonant scoring to its players’ action, particularly in Boris’ final confrontation with the Fuhrer himself. But they then become slickly assimilated into the scene itself - a violin becomes Boris' infant son Simeon, cradled by Queen Giovanna, or a gun pulled on a fleeing Alexander Belev; a flute becomes a radio mic, a violin bow a pointer in the strategy room portioning out land on a map. I’ve seen similarly minimal sets struggle to convey a sense of place or momentum, but here the whole thing is so smoothly choreographed, including incredibly well-timed lighting cues, that it feels almost cinematic in its sense of montage, every element clicking into place like a Rube-Goldberg machine.

Some of the humour was a little on the corny side for my liking, particularly in terms of the cultural references the script throws in. There’s your classic ‘Make Bulgaria Great Again’ (from the milquetoast ‘orange Cheeto’/‘Drumpf’ school of humour that might appease the wooly liberals but doesn’t stop their subjects winning elections, unfortunately), or a reference to Theresa May’s ‘strong and stable’ pledge (a hot gag in 2017, I’m sure, but in desperate need of an update). There’s even a bizarre Phantom Menace reference that I had to snort at if only for its incongruity. Sometimes the meta-humour lands, but at others it feels like the company is winking at you a bit too hard.

But as the play moved further away from this wisecracking self-consciousness, I was completely gripped by its action. The Brief Life could have run the risk of appealing to a ‘great man’ narrative where only the actions of one benevolent aristocrat could possibly save the day, but thankfully Out of the Forest don’t fall into this trap. In many ways this is not Boris’ story, but the story of the acts of resistance by civilians on the ground or in positions of government that actually get the job done.

David Leopold as Metropolitan Stefan, Clare Fraenkel as Jewish musician Anka Lazarov, and Sasha Wilson as Belev’s secretary Liliana Panitsa, each play their respective roles with a quiet power and dignity that emphasise the fact that everyone has their part to play in the struggle for liberation. Stefan’s speech to his occupiers about the power of direct action against Nazi rule carries a particularly timely resonance at a point where we see similar actions against genocide facing draconian state suppression, and choosing to end on the bond between Liliana and Anka rather than Boris drives home that you need not wear a crown to be an agent of change.

And the play also pinpoints the insidious ways in which we can become comfy with fascism if it appeals to our individual interests, no more brilliantly than in Laurence Boothman as Bogdan Filov. Bogdan is soft-spoken, wheedling, non-threatening - until he isn’t. Alexander Belev (Leopold) and Theodore Dannecker (Wilson) are menacing, certainly, but they wear their swastikas on their sleeves. Boothman, meanwhile, perfectly captures what Michael Rosen once wrote about fascism - that it does not ‘arrive in fancy dress’ but ‘as your friend/It will restore your honour/make you feel proud/protect your house/give you a job/clean up the neighbourhood/remind you of how great you once were.’

The Brief Life explores Boris’ position with nuance, but it also knows what is right. It is a very explicit call to fight injustice with whatever means you have at your disposal, one that I’m sure will only become more relevant in the times to come. Obviously today’s news only increases the timeliness of its message, but it is also hard not to hear Anka’s story of her family’s ancestral plum tree being uprooted by the occupation and think of the same being done to Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank, or the radio confiscation and media blackouts mirroring the Israeli government withholding electricity and killing journalists in Gaza. I don’t know if this was intentional, but the decision to close with Anka leaving for Jaffa was a courageously nuanced one, and one that prompted a hush from the crowd, becoming, whether she knows it or not, part of a settler colonial project that will go on to replicate the violence she fought against. It should be noted that many of the people currently putting their bodies on the line against injustice in the ways Stefan describes are anti-Zionist Jews and Holocaust survivors, on the understanding that ‘never again’ means ‘never again for anyone’.

Telling yourself you are powerless is an easy narrative. Telling yourself that only those at the top can solve things is an easy narrative. The Brief Life and Unexpected Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria eschews easy narratives, showing that the work of resistance is messy, difficult, and absolutely necessary. And while there’s room for nuance, one thing is crystal clear - don’t foxtrot with fascists. I left the North Wall feeling like I had the power to make change. That’s the kind of art we’re going to need.