The Passenger
Nadya Menuhin, based on novel by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
Directed by Tim Supple
Finborough Theatre
Star-rating: 4.5
Hard-hitting, grown-up and theatrically sophisticated
This hard-hitting play explores the horror of being a German Jew in 1938 mostly from the point of view of a single individual: Otto Silbermann (Robert Neumark Jones), who is a successful, middleclass business man who doesn’t “look” Jewish. It is based, apparently, largely on the Boschwitz’s personal family experience. He died in 1942 and his novel wasn’t published in German until 2018.
It’s theatrically sophisticated, making continual use of Finborough’s four entry points. The four fine actors who form the ensemble glide, stride or burst onto the square set in raincoats, uniforms or in one case attractive 1930s haute couture often bringing props such as in-period bakelite telephones. Some actions (such as lighting cigarettes) are mimed in Brechtian style. And Mattis Larsen’s dark lighting heightens the terrifying sinister atmosphere. There is, for example, a chilling scene with blackout and floodlights flashing round the space. Beneath the action is Joe Alford’s richly unsettling sound design which often connotes heart beat, tension and echoes of railway trains.
The central performance from Neumark Jones is outstanding. Otto is urbane, competent, used to managing people and getting things done. But we gradually watch him change from that to a desperate, destitute man on the run for his life. The point of the title is that, now that his “Ayrian” wife has gone to stay with her Nazi brother, Otto is trying to escape from Germany and keeps getting on trains – the set (Hannah Schmidt) with seating in all four sides frequently becomes a railway carriage and above it is stylised 1930s illuminated railway sign with names of stations. He travels, increasingly irrationally, all over Germany commenting hollowly at one point that he has “emigrated to the railway system” and everyone in the audience knows what his eventual fate will be although we only see him descend into madness – perhaps a metaphor for the ruthless escalating madness all around him.
The four other actors slide seamlessly in and out of dozens of roles with especially noteworthy work from Kelly Price who plays all the female roles, including Otto’s wife, an attractive woman he is drawn to on a train and a kind nurse (“Don’t let them catheterise you” – awful implications) among other roles, all nicely voiced and convincing.
It’s a real pleasure to see a powerfully compelling play for grown ups. It deals with some of the darkest imaginable subjects and one of the worst ever periods in European history but it never sensationalises it. And the restraint is what makes it so effective. The end is masterly. The only other place I have had heard an audience holding its collective breath and listening in silent intensity as happened at press night for The Passenger, is in a concert hall as the last notes of, say, Holst’s The Planets die away.
Photograph by Steve Gregson
