Growing up as a triplet, I felt like I didn’t own my identity. Everyone would compare and contrast my body and personality against my siblings — I existed against them, despite wanting to be like them. This is the same confusing coming-of-age faced by the sister protagonists of The H Twins, Hope Campbell Gundlah’s harrowing new play now at DC’s District Fringe Festival. But unlike me, the sisters are trapped in 1940s Germany, with horrors imminent and unescapable.
The show starts in an abstract space, before historical details give context. Hilda and Helga (portrayed by the playwright and her real-life twin sister Tess Cameron Gundlah, respectively) enjoy their highly routine lives. Uncle M (John Elmendorf) gives them both psychological evaluations and treats, instilling in them that they’re “biologically valuable children.” Two nurses (Lisette Gabrielle and Rebecca Husk) secretly provide the sisters access to American media, inadvertently inspiring them to become vaudeville stars. But the patronage of adult characters is confining, and references to “Aryan” values abound. As the sisters reach adolescence, the pressure to perform to perfection soon becomes crushing.
The H Twins is structured on a cruel dramatic irony: we know they’re imprisoned in Nazi Germany, even though the sisters don’t. Hope Campbell Gundlah based this play on Dr. Josef Mengele’s terrifying experiments on twin siblings, along with Lebensborn homes that attempted to raise children with idealized “Aryan” bodies and values.
The combination of two related-but-different histories makes the show feel more speculative than real (the show’s marketing explicitly asks “What if?”). But if the premise strains credulity, The H Twins succeeds mostly because of the committed performances of its two leads. Hope’s Hilda obsesses over rules, while Tess’ Helga becomes disillusioned — and both actresses convincingly trace a stunted but intense maturation in a short time frame. The other actors mostly perform in silhouette behind a sheet. This makes sense dramaturgically (the theatrical space feels cold and isolated), but as an audience member I grew frustrated that I couldn’t watch their great performances or see their reactions.
When an artist dramatizes the Holocaust, they face an ethical dilemma: how do you stage a historical genocide without turning it into a generic allegory? The Holocaust resonates with current-day atrocities, but in storytelling, it can often feel like a legend and not a historically specific event. This is the danger with The H Twins, and with so many recent narratives following young Nazi children: the journey from sheltered German childhood to socially-conscious awakening might just be a blunt metaphor for growing up.
As a playwright and performer, Hope Campbell Gundlah mostly avoids this trap by grounding the show’s revelations in specific but often unknown histories. Still, the greatest insight The H Twins provides isn’t into Nazi Germany, but into the overwhelming emotional lives of twins. Hilda and Helga see themselves in each other, but it’s a gross kind of mirror: each reflection is an ideal the other can never achieve. That’s a horror story that doesn’t need to be set against the backdrop of real-life horrors to feel startling. Yet if you’re able to suspend your disbelief on the show’s strained set-up, The H Twins still lands with potent drama.
The H Twins
A dark comedy by Hope Campbell Gundlah
Running Time: 90 minutes
Dates and Times:
- Saturday, July 12, 2:45p
- Sunday, July 13, 5:30p
- Sunday, July 20, 7:45p
- Friday, July 25, 7:45p
- Saturday, July 26, 1:30p
Venue: Phoenix – UDC Lecture Hall (44A03)
Tickets: $15
More Info and Tickets: experiments on twin siblings
Genre: Dark comedy
Content Warnings: Discussion of self-harm, physical violence, and torture
Playwright: Hope Campbell Gundlah
Performed by: Hope Campbell Gundlah, Tess Cameron Gundlah, John Elmendorf, Rebecca Husk, Lisette Gabrielle
The complete 2025 District Fringe Festival schedule is online here.
The 2025 District Fringe Festival program is online here.
