THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

★★★★

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

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.

THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed on 13th February 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Steve Gregson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

KAFKA | ★★ | June 2024

THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS | ★★★ | May 2024

BANGING DENMARK | ★★★ | April 2024

FOAM | ★★★★ | April 2024

JAB | ★★★★ | February 2024

THE WIND AND THE RAIN | ★★★ | July 2023

SALT-WATER MOON | ★★★★ | January 2023

PENNYROYAL | ★★★★ | July 2022

THE STRAW CHAIR | ★★★ | April 2022

THE SUGAR HOUSE | ★★★★ | November 2021

HE PASSENGER

THE PASSENGER

★★

“the lack of structure or setting or context make any attempt to understand what is happening impossible”

Franz Kafka is an extraordinary literary figure, with a wealth of brilliant works that encapsulate the human experience. Over the course of eighty minutes, writer and performer Jack Klaff delivers a lecture on Kafka’s life and works, impersonating an eclectic group of fifty characters, from Max Brod to Albert Einstein. The play uses minimal set and design, using a singular stool, no score or sound effects and minimal lighting states, with Klaff carrying the weight of the performance. An audible “shhhh” comes from the wings to signal the start of the play. Later we learn this was supposedly Kafka’s favoured start to a piece.

Throughout the play, characters introduce themselves before launching into an expositional monologue. Vague outlines of a plot can be extracted, but much like Kafka’s work, the show is an experience of eternal confusion. There are kernels of intrigue scattered throughout, but the lack of structure or setting or context make any attempt to understand what is happening impossible. Extracts from Kafka’s work such as ‘The Trial’, ‘The Castle’ and ‘Metamorphosis’ are performed, wrapped up among various character’s monologues about their relationship to Kafka. They rattle off facts about themselves, often never appearing again. The various voices of the characters were ill defined and rarely identifiable until at least three sentences in. Despite Klaff’s tearful performance, the lack of clarity makes emotional moments impossible to be moved by. Accents come and go, physical attributes are barely held and transitions are indiscernible. Despite fifty characters mentioned in the script, roughly a dozen of them are distinct. The threads of the show are totally unknowable, at no point was it clear of who, what, where or why something was happening on stage.

There are brief parts which are genuinely interesting. Annoyingly, the final few minutes tell more about the titular character than the entire play. In an interlude from the perspective of a stand-up comedian, come some much needed levity. There are specific jokes that are humorous and reflect on Kafka’s impact, including discussion of ‘esque’ as a suffix. As a celebration of Kafka, there is little to be gained in knowledge about his life or works from this piece. The play is mostly inaccessible without astute knowledge of his short stories and the nature of how his work was published. There is mention of his ancestry and speculation of his sexuality, but little exploration of who he was as a man in any emotional capacity. There are brief glimpses into how his work may have been influenced by his life; it is set up that Kafka had a fear of ‘butcher knives’ because of a family member, his most famous literary character dies by said knife.

Klaff utilises a technique in which random phrases are spoken at high volume, as if he attempting to jolt the audience to attention. Whilst reminding the audience to listen, it revealed how little attention had been captured. The eighty minutes dragged on like a surrealist nightmare, enclosed by the obligation that as a reviewer I must watch the whole thing; truly a Kafkaesque experience.

THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

★★★★

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

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

KAFKA at the Finborough Theatre

★★

“the lack of structure or setting or context make any attempt to understand what is happening impossible”

KAFKA at the Finborough Theatre

Reviewed on 13th June 2024

by Jessica Potts

Photography by Marilyn Kingwill

Previously reviewed at this venue:

KAFKA

KAFKA