Travelling Light review, The Lyttelton

Yiddishe bummer

Travelling Light is a play about Jewishness and film making.  Historically the two intertwine, but here they're distinct. It is a piece of theatre that is self-consciously Jewish and self-consciously didactic about the nature of film, as if  the writer comes to both from a point of ignorance and is frightened of getting his facts wrong. The result is a dull, overlong first half and a conclusion that is sentimental but has no heart.

The action starts in a shetl - a semi-rural, East European, largely Jewish town at the beginning of the 20th century. Motl Mendl inherits his father's new movie camera but isn't sure how to exploit it. Enter the local timber mill owner. Jacob Bindel, illiterate and rough hewn, instinctively recognises the power of the medium to tell the stories that spill out of him. He commissions a film, inspiring, managing and driving Motl's innovations and his decision to head to Hollywood.

Nicholas Hytner's production is all front-of-stage, the characters confined to a narrow rectangular room. Beyond, the shetl stretches into the distance, but what dominates is the sky, which doubles as a screen for numerous, silent, black and white films. Antony Sher's Bindel is warm and funny, a loveable foil to the petulant Mendl (Damien Monony), but even their shared love interest - Lauren O'Neil as Anna - provides neither creative nor sexual tension.

In conclusion: The humour in the piece cannot compensate for the lack of drama. The subject matter - both shetl life and the early days of film, is fascinating, but this particular vehicle is too light for travel to The Lyttleton to be recommended.

References
National Theatre, Travelling Light
Charles Spencer review in The Daily Telegraph