Review by Simon Jenner, February 15th 2025
“How”, asks Otto Silberman, “can a prosperous man become a fugitive in his own country in three days?” November 10th 1938. Kristallnacht. As Silberman tries to flee Germany he bounces like a pinball between every station in the country, always dropping to rest in his former home city, Berlin. Home, that alien word. Nadya Menuhin’s adaptation of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s 1939 novel The Passenger directed by former Young Vic artistic director Tim Supple opens at the Finborough till March 15th.
Robert Neumark Jones as Otto is onstage throughout the straight-through 95 minutes. Spun out of his comfort and marriage to “Aryan” thus safe Elfriede (Kelly Price’s first brief role) he lurches through a story with a multi-roling ensemble that ricochets round a space sometimes crepuscular, sometimes blacked out altogether or lit by Mattis Larsen with a pristine lunar caustic to it.
Robert Newmark Jones and Kelly Price. Photo credit: Steve Gregson
They should have left like their son Eduard, now in Paris. Is it six months too late? As Otto repeatedly badgers his son over the phone for visas he’s confronted by old friends becoming acquaintances; and a business partner whom he knew three years in the trenches, turns slowly on him. And that’s the friends. Theo Findler (Eric MacLennan’s first role) reduces his offer on the house and business partner, affable Gustav Becker (Ben Fox), through several meetings finally presents him with a fleece accompli: 30,000 Reichsmarks in a briefcase.
A carriage chess-match between a Nazi SA man (MacLennan) with moves flourished as abstract words across the space as the chess-pieces remain where they are, is the thematic heart of the work. Otto claims he’s not very good but charms the man and his wife (Price). It’s not that the chess-player keeps asking for a rematch, but the way symbolic tensions and ironies are coded as moves, that tightens everything. You fear tensions snapping. Otto tries for the border with the help of a communist (Dan Milne) and gets to Belgium. Only to be repulsed and forced back.
Kelly Price and Robert Neumark Jones. Photo Credit: Steve Gregson
Supple’s pace is relentless but crystalline. Vocally too there’s enormous clarity and nothing feels rushed. Moments of repose glint like frozen ballet, the headlong flight of Neumark Jones countered by his character’s preternatural calm. Hard-won, he can ‘pass’ for now as non-Jewish, and often deals with others from financial and personal strengths: Menuhin’s (and Boschwitz’s) character isn’t a paradigm of persecution. Otto’s resourceful, can help others, strike bargains, attract people, play the old soldier. Neumark Jones points this up with a light but unmistakable authority.
He then begins to unravel Otto’s increasingly fraught panic and disbelief like a spring uncoiling. “This is the twentieth century” he declares, long before a final gesture leaves him at the furthest pitch from sanity.
This poise though has consequences, in Otto’s increasingly edgy relationship with his old (and Jewish) friend Fritz (Milne again) who points out he holds no such advantages. Otto’s own dehumanising distance on subsequent meetings turns into self-accusations in one of the work’s subtlest and darkest moments.
Another pivotal moment comes in meeting fellow-passenger Ursula, a socialite both attracted to Otto (it’s mutual) and wanting to help, if quietly. Price is able to inhabit a role both warm and poised on the brink of something else, where mutual hesitations and impulses sway in the balance. This time the platonic lighting of cigarettes semaphores another seismic exchange. Price’s roles – another as Nurse – are almost wholly sympathetic. Fox’s are often weary and wary; and MacLennan’s Schwartz at the end provides a blistering masterclass in sheer terror.
Ensemble. Photo Credit Steve Gregson
Ensemble. Photo Credit: Steve Gregson
Hannah Schmidt’s set echoes in-the-round seating with a central square of red chairs and nothing bar a few props, with by contrast detailed period costumes. Above, an array of station names are picked out in Larsen’s lighting (which extends to torches). Joseph Alford’s sound is both haunting – the continual shunts and whistles – and undistracting. He’s also associate director.
A consummate ensemble piece, this is both mesmerizingly performed and disturbing. Menuhin’s exceptionally-tuned distillation of the novel turns this anti-thriller into a theatrical vortex.
After his lawyer uncle was murdered by Nazis, Boschwitz himself fled Germany with his mother in 1935, to be interned in Britain Sent to Australia, on a return to Britain his ship fell victim to a U-Boat.
As Boschwitz’s novel finds fresh acclaim since its re-editing and republication (in 2021), it’s now interrogating us. Just what has changed exactly? Essential theatre: a must-see.
Robert Neumark Jones. Photo Credit: Steve Gregson
Ensemble. Photo Credit: Steve Gregson
Presented by Toby Parsons Productions in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre
Stage Manager Ted Walliker, Production Manager Charlie Rayner
Production Photography Steve Gregson
General Manager Jillian Feuerstein, Assistant General Manager, Esther Knowles
Producers Toby Parsons, Neil McPherson, Associate Producer Julia Blomberg
Ensemble. Photo Credit: Steve Gregson
