Nachtland ***

Three years ago, the comedian Jimmy Carr hosted a television debate on whether paintings created by reprehensible artists should be destroyed. The controversial nature of this show elicited criticism, but it did raise the moral question of art provenance.

This theme is developed by Marius von Mayenburg in his modern satire Nachtland. Two siblings Nicola and Philip (Lilith Leonard and Gabriel Oprea) are going through their deceased father’s house. This painstaking and emotionally fraught task is brought to a halt by the discovery of a painting in the attic, seemingly by Adolf Hitler.

They employ an art expert (Sarah Widass), who is convinced of its authenticity. The market for Nazi memorabilia is vast and international. However, a genuine Hitler painting would literally raise the stakes, especially if provenance could be established.

Philip’s wife, Judith (Sophie Delevine) is of Jewish heritage and becomes increasingly greatly troubled by unfolding events. It turned out that while in Vienna, Hitler frequently used a Jewish framing company for his watercolours, Samuel Morgenstern, whose fate would later be sealed by seismic events in the Third Reich. The deep dive into family history reveals further disquieting details from the Nazi era, which, coupled with the underlying monetary aspect, leads to difficult family conversations, threatening long-term relationship rifts.

This ACT Brighton production makes a creditable stab at a tricky piece of theatre. After an uneven start, some of the performances grow, notably Delevine’s righteous indignation. Doubtless this production will hit its stride, especially if the performers are able to avoid a tendency to mirroring each other’s energy.

Marius Von Mayenburg’s extraordinary The Ugly One is probably his best-known work, but his most recent offering of Nachtland has a political and societal prescience, exploring identity, culture, guilt and the rise of the right.

Does a piece of art have intrinsic artistic and financial value, or is it inextricably linked to its creator? And if the latter is the architect of the Holocaust, is it morally correct to profit from its sale? Two ideas can be simultaneously true of course: Von Mayenburg’s biting satire asks difficult questions.