BERLIN: The British playwright Michael Frayn's play Democracy, which resurrects the sorry saga of the disintegration of the former West German chancellor Willy Brandt, was a critical success in London , but how would Germans take to it when it premiered in Berlin on Thursday night?

If Frayn was concerned, it appears he need not have been.

The story follows the life of the hard drinking Brandt and his inner circle from the moment he was elected chancellor in 1969 to his eventually downfall, after it was discovered that his closest aide was an East German spy.

After a brief primer on the state of German politics, the action proper gets under way with Horst Ehmke, the brash minister without portfolio under Brandt, hiring the diminutive and slightly sleazy Gunter Guillaume, a Stasi (East German secret police) agent and former East German shop owner, as the chancellor's aide de camp. Guillaume starts his long career in love with the image of East Germany, betraying every secret that crosses his desk to the Stasi. But eventually he betrays himself, passing up an opportunity to escape to the east, because of his growing love for and loyalty to Brandt.

Now in his 80s, Ehmke was in the audience at the Renaissance theatre, still sporting the same short-cropped silver hair as his character on stage, but has grown a white goatee since he retired.

From his seat in the seventh row, the former minister obviously enjoyed the play, laughing with the rest of the audience at Brandt's sharp-tongued wit.

"It was not really like that," he said.-Dawn/The Guardian News Service.