Review: THE PASSENGER, Finborough Theatre

In Primo Levi’s harrowing account of survival in Auschwitz, If This Is A Man, the horrors of the Nazi extermination machine are laid bare. But, as is the case with Jonathan Glazer’s film, The Zone of Interest, we can take some comfort in distance. We don’t wear paramilitary uniforms, obsessively follow industrial processes to kill people, walk about benignly under a chimney billowing smoke. They’re not like us.

Recent years, recent weeks even, have given pause to such complacent thoughts, so it’s timely for the Finborough Theatre to stage Nadya Menuhin’s new adaptation of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s recently rediscovered novel, The Passenger. Because, in this case, they’re irrefutably like us.

With Kristallnacht’s terror raging all around him, Otto Silbermann, long aware that something like that was coming, but a German married to a gentile, clings to the belief that he can stay in Germany, that the madness would blow over, that normality would return. Not for the first time this year, I heard a voice in my head saying, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”

Too late now to procure an exit visa, his apartment and business swiftly sold for pittance with the threat of confiscation imminent, he is suddenly lost in his own country, travelling on trains in a geographical, psychological and political maze that keeps spitting him out, back where he started. As comprehensively as he would be in a camp with a brand on his arm, he is dehumanised - in plain sight.

The strength of the play is in the ordinariness of the people he encounters. Robert Neumark Jones is Otto, not quite an everyman (he’s too wealthy and educated for that) but a successful middle class Berliner… with a J stamped in his passport. In compartments, in offices, at stations, he runs into a cross-section of people like you and me. Played by an ensemble of Ben Fox, Eric MacLennan, Dan Milne and Kelly Price, some of these Germans try to help, but most don’t - keep your nose clean, look after Number One.

Firstly you’re shocked by the casual racism (until you recall that many people voting in Britain today enjoyed speaking in such terms in the 1970s and would quite like the chance to do so again). Secondly, you’re shocked by the naked self-interest of men and women hiding blackmail and extortion under the thin conceit of taking their country back from the ‘International Jewish Conspiracy’. Thirdly, you’re shocked at the acquiescence in such practices from those who know it is evil, but do nothing, cowed by populist authoritarianism. 

It’s all so up close and personal: the ticket collector on the train; the business partner seizing his chance; the friends who are now mere acquaintances, even the family shunning his Jewish inconvenience. These are not the sadists making the selections as women and children are disgorged at the gates, not the true believers goosestepping at Nuremberg, not even party members - most of them. 

The play doesn’t work completely. Tim Supple directs at a frenetic pace, scenes piling one on top of another, inevitably flattening the characters into types. The only exception is a middle class woman who offers something close to compassion to Otto, a rare opportunity for Kelly Price step out of the ensemble and do some character work. At over 90 minutes all-through in the tight confines of the space, it’s a gruelling watch (maybe it has to be) but there’s no time to reflect on the impact of one conversation before the next is reaching its conclusion. It’s also inexplicably, almost painfully, loud, even in scenes not characterised by trauma.

The novel, forgotten for decades before its recent rediscovery, received critical and popular acclaim and one can, in this stage adaptation, see why. But this production is definitely a candidate for the old cliche that less would be more.

The Passenger at the Finborough Theatre until 15 March

Photo images: Steve Gregson

 

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