★★★★★

“an exhilarating experience”

Vollmond, first premiered by Pina Bausch and her company Tanztheater Wuppertal in 2006, returns to Sadlers Wells in 2025. It is a welcome revival, following in the footsteps of the 2024 revival of Nelken. Once again, the Company assembles on stage to show us the essence of “tanztheater”—a unique creation of movement and dance that is Pina Bausch’ signature contribution to the world of dance. Beautifully costumed (design by Marion Cito), the dancers navigate Peter Pabst’s extraordinary set design. Vollmond is a wonderful, if often unsettling, way to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Vollmond—the word means “full moon” in German—is a dance about emotions often associated with this particular phase of the moon. The emotion of love is a big theme in this show but it’s complex and often ironic. As everyone knows, full moons also have a particular association with high tides. It’s no surprise then, to find that water figures prominently in the show. Lots and lots of water. What Pina Bausch’s dancers do with that water, and how water gradually takes over Peter Pabst’s deceptively simple set is what surprises.

The work begins with dancers entering the space in pairs to make their moves on one another. Water is present, or rather absent, right from the start. Armed with empty water bottles, the dancers begin by making sounds by flinging the bottles about. Bottles are replaced with staves, and before we quite know it, we are in the middle of battles between various couples who court by confrontation. They push each other across the stage with kisses, or shake each other by the shoulders or the hair. They pour water into glasses, and then pour it out on each other. Water begins as a gentle rain falling from above. It flows as a shallow river gradually revealed that the dancers can swim in. By the end of the show, the rain has become an overwhelming torrent that drenches everything, including a vast boulder that looks as though it could outlast time itself. But as we know, water outlasts rock. And the emotions represented by all this water are somehow greater and longer lasting than the humans pushed and pulled by them.

It is inevitable that the dancers get wet. Nevertheless, they take an often childlike delight in the experience of being drenched—and drenching each other—that develops into a full scale water fight by the end of the show. And Pina Bausch focuses our attention on the way in which water changes the bodies that come into contact with it, and the costumes the dancers are wearing. Water ebbs and flows and we are caught up in the crazy beauty of it all.

What differentiates Vollmond from the earlier Nelken and its field of carnations, is that while carnations can be trampled and the dance space reclaimed for the dancers that inhabit it, the space here cannot. The dancers can only find ways to negotiate around and on that boulder, and in and on that water. The dance is this space is technically dangerous, and the dancers must navigate with care. It’s a fitting metaphor for the emotions that love—and full moons—produce. There is something deeply authentic about watching dancers play and struggle under the blazing lights that echo days and nights passing in a variety of seasons.

Vollmond is a less layered and ironic a show than Nelken perhaps, but it still demands the full attention of the audience. It is a piece focused on pairs of dancers, and long solos. Only once does the company assemble on stage for a moment in which all the dancers move in unison. With the music of Amon Tobin, the Balanescu Quartet, Cat Power, Carl Craig, June Miyake, Magyar Posse, Nenad Jelíc, René Aubry, and Tom Waits, the sound is as eclectic as its dance. An evening with Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal is an exhilarating experience, even if your imagination and your emotions go into overload and you end up as exhausted as the dancers. Unmissable.

THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

★★★★

“a beautifully directed production that recreates the dark moodiness of the 1930”

The Passenger, adapted by Nadya Menuhin from Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s novel Der Reisende, has just opened at the Finborough Theatre. It’s a story set in Germany just after the Kristallnacht in 1938. The protagonist, a successful Jewish businessman, is attempting to find a way out of Nazi Germany. This tense, nail biting drama, directed by Tim Supple, begins like a thriller, and takes off like one of the express trains our leading man is always boarding.

The novel’s author was drawing on his own experiences of escaping Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The host of memorable characters that emerge onto the tiny stage at the Finborough Theatre have the ring of authenticity. We follow Otto Silbermann’s journey from Berlin, where he is forced to sell his apartment for pennies on the dollar to a German friend. Then he signs over his business—his life’s work—to a non-Jewish partner in order to protect it. Silbermann knows Gustav is untrustworthy and has a gambling habit, but at this late stage in Hitler’s takeover, he simply has no choice. Through a series of misadventures, and failure to obtain an exit visa, Silbermann finds himself in continual transit through Germany’s cities, already in the throes of political conflict. He meets many different characters and becomes involved in their stories, despite trying to melt anonymously into the background. His attempts to find a way out of Germany, while carrying a large sum of money in his briefcase, grow ever more desperate. Menuhin’s dramatization focuses on themes of love and betrayal in The Passenger, even if the love story in this play is a man’s bewildered struggle against fascists that are taking over the land he loves and fought for in the First World War. Silbermann is married to a Christian, considers himself thoroughly German, yet is betrayed by his country, his friends and business partners, simply because he is a Jew.

The Passenger is a beautifully directed production that recreates the dark moodiness of the 1930s that we remember from films like The Third Man. Tim Supple keeps the company continually on the move around and about a simple square. This square, lined with seating, becomes train carriages, waiting rooms, and any number of spaces that Otto Silbermann encounters in his travels. As the audience, we’re right in the middle of the action as well, as the actors, dressed in period coats and hats, make speedy entrances and exits in front of us. (Set and costume design by Hannah Schmidt.) All this movement makes for a brisk beginning of the play. The atmosphere of the set design is powerfully enhanced by Joseph Alford’s sound design. It’s easy to convince ourselves that we are there in 1930s train stations. Mattis Larsen’s lighting is tightly focused on the action, giving us the sense of constant motion in a space much larger than the one we are actually seated in. The actors deserve credit for managing the precise choreography that ensures they never collide with one another, even while managing a host of complicated actions, including dressing the leading man.

Robert Neumark Jones convinces as Otto Silbermann, and he is accompanied by an equally talented ensemble on his travels. Ben Fox plays his swindling business partner Gustav with just the right amount of bluster. Eric MacLennan is an overly hearty chess playing SA man, and Dan Milne switches between sympathetic characters to sinister supporters of Nazism in the blink of an eye. Kelly Price plays all the female roles with sympathy, and glamour, when required. Menuhin’s script powers up like a thriller, all short, sharp scenes as Silbermann’s story gets underway. It does seem overly long at ninety minutes of playing time, but that might be because the action slows midway through. The story, like Silbermann, struggles to find its earlier pace as it drifts aimlessly from one destination to another. Once Silbermann has failed to escape from Germany, what is he doing, other than trying to keep out of the clutches of the Nazis? A more sharply defined goal in the second half might help our traveller reach his ultimate destination, even if it is a less than hopeful one.

The Finborough Theatre continues its well earned reputation for producing thoughtful scripts with this play. The Passenger certainly feels like it could eventually make the transition to a bigger stage, and a larger audience. It’s a timely period piece that reminds us, chillingly, that the past is never very far away.

VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★★

“an exhilarating experience”

VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 14th February 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Martin Argyroglo

Recently reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

VOLLMOND

VOLLMOND

VOLLMOND

THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

★★★★

“a beautifully directed production that recreates the dark moodiness of the 1930”

THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed on 13th February 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Steve Gregson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HE PASSENGER

THE PASSENGER

THE PASSENGER