A wealthy Jewish businessman takes a series of Kafkaesque journeys on the German train system soon after Kristallnacht, driven from his home and in flight for his life. Otto Silbermann never makes it out of the country but – maddeningly – loops round and round, stuck in the trap of rising Nazi terror and afraid of every passenger he meets. He carries a suitcase of money, the last vestige of power he has in a homeland that has turned against Jews.
The Passenger is based on Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s novel, which was written at blazing speed when Boschwitz, himself a German Jew, was just 23. His manuscript was discovered decades after his death in 1942, at the age of 27.
It is an immensely chilling story, all the more daring for being written in an absurdist vein, but it is not refined or dread-filled enough in its enactment here. The production, adapted by Nadya Menuhin and directed by Tim Supple, is given a symbolic, stripped-down staging. We follow Otto (Robert Neumark Jones) as accompanying actors (Ben Fox, Kelly Price, Eric MacLennan and Dan Milne) juggle multiple parts including those of his business employee, his “Aryan” wife and his Nazi brother-in-law, as well as others he encounters in his journeys.
A key element of the story is the threatening whirl of passengers and guards around Otto. So actors come and go out of the auditorium almost constantly. This does not play to the strengths of the theatre’s limited space, and the atmosphere is variously busy or cramped rather than escalating in darkness or claustrophobic intensity.
Among the passengers is a scared German Jewish cabinet maker; an SA member who wants to play chess with Otto; and a woman who flirts with him but does not offer anything more concrete. Others absolve themselves of responsibility for his dispossessed and endangered place in Germany – from Belgian border guards to police officers and old associates.
There is a square arrangement of chairs around the stage that represents train carriages, but it is blockish, limiting the space around it for actors to navigate. Smatters of clumsy exposition come with the opening scenes and some performances are too blunt or shouty. There are a few powerful scenes and the production has a brooding, black-and-white quality, but as a whole it is not noirish enough despite the shadows, haze and fedora-clad figures.
Terror never really collects, although there is certainly a sense of Otto’s rising frustration at the senselessness of his changed status from citizen to state pariah. The production captures the dizzying circuitousness of his journey but not the fear, tension, panic and depths of rage that this story deserves.
• At Finborough theatre, London, until 15 March
