Adam von Trott was a principal figure in Count Claus von Stauffenberg’s bomb plot of 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He paid a terrible price for its failure: after days of torture by the Gestapo, he was executed by hanging from a meat hook, his grisly end watched on film by the gloating Führer. His death brought pain to many in Oxford: as a Rhodes scholar at Mansfield College in the early 1930s, Trott set many hearts a-flutter in the University, among them that of historian A.L. Rowse for whom he was (according to Rowse’s biographer) “the longest and most intense love of [his] life” (a platonic one, I should necessarily add).

That Trott’s was, in part, an Oxford story prompted London-based playwright Bernard Adams to secure a production here for his compelling study of his role in the July 20 plot. Adams’s satisfaction over what was supplied by a fine team of student actors, under the direction of the OUDS president Lucinda Dawkins, was evident from his curtain speech after last Wednesday’s performance at Chipping Norton Theatre. (The same production had been seen in Oxford two months earlier.) The Oxford aspect to the tale was established early on in a gripping confrontation at Wadham between the charismatic German aristocrat (admirably portrayed by Christopher Williams) and the college’s legendary Warden (and university Mr Fixit) Maurice Bowra (Jack Graham). Ending, as it did in real life, with Trott being shown the door, the scene neatly set out what was to be, for many, the abiding difficulty over understanding Trott’s opposition to Hitler: that he felt his purpose was best served within the Nazi party.

One difficulty faced by those brave enough to fight the regime was securing support from the British Government, for whom all Germans were enemies. This was well conveyed in a tense confrontation between an exasperated clerical supporter, the Bishop of Chichester (Jack Peters), and the silky smooth Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden (the excellent Frederick Bowerman).

In a uniformly well-acted production, there was fine work, too, from Hannah Gliksten as von Trott’s wife Clarita (who, remarkably, is still alive) and from Marie Findlay as his friend Missie Vassiltcikov, a fervent anti-Nazi. But the performances of the evening — each reaching emotional depths that could not fail to communicate with the audience — were those of David Shields as Stauffenberg and Lloyd Houston — pictured with Shields above — as a prison guard (a fictional character this) who was a witness to the conspirators’ trial and execution.