World Premiere of Nadya Menuhin's THE PASSENGER Comes to Finborough Theatre

The world premiere of The Passenger by Nadya Menuhin, based on the critically acclaimed novel by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, opens at the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre for a five-week limited season on Monday, 10 February 2025 (Press Nights: Thursday, 13 February 2025 and Friday, 14 February 2025 at 7.30pm).

Shot through with Hitchcockian tension, The Passenger is the terrifyingly absurd story of Otto Silbermann, a criminal on the run who hasn't committed a crime.

Kristallnacht, Berlin, November 1938. The streets of Germany are an orgy of state-sanctioned violence. As Nazi storm troopers batter down his door, respected businessman Otto flees his home and finds himself plunged into a new world order, his life dissolved overnight. 

Betrayed by family, friends and colleagues, and desperately trying to conceal his Jewish identity, he takes train after train across Germany in a race to escape his homeland that is no longer home... 

23 year old Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938 in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht. Rediscovered 70 years later, The Passenger became an international hit, was translated into over twenty languages and was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller more than 80 years after it was originally published. 

Playwright Nadya Menuhin makes her full-length debut at the Finborough Theatre. She studied languages at University College London, and currently works as a literary agent. She was part of The Royal Court Theatre Writers' Group, mentored by Stef Smith, and BBC Writersroom London Voices cohort. Her previous plays include I, Mother (Fuel Residency at Druid Theatre, Galway), The Second Rule (Mercury Theatre, Colchester) and Tremors, starring Tamsin Greig (Online for Bitter Pill Theatre).

 

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