Anything That Flies review, Jermyn Street Theatre

Anything That Flies starts unexpectedly. A 'good' German whose father opposed the Nazis is sent to look after an elderly Jew, the only member of his family to survive the holocaust. Otto has lived in North West London since the war. When Lotte arrives at his door - sent by his daughter in Israel - he is deeply unhappy. What follows is a dance between two displaced people separated by religion, age, gender, and different perspectives on the same terrible period in German history.

Across 90 minutes we learn Lotte's father was murdered for his views. She mourns an idealised pre-Nazi Germany where people worked together. As her story emerges in touching soundbites, it paves the gulf between her and the old man. This is a useful dramatic device but it is a romanticised and uncomfortable moral stance. There can be no experiential equivalence. Lotte's father died for his politics, which were a personal choice. Otto's family were murdered for their race, which was not.

Anything That Flies is peppered with allusions to better stories than the one we're watching. Why did Otto's British-born daughter move to Israel? What happened to his father's  patented textile printing process? Will he refuse the risible reparations offered by the German government for stolen property (I have a friend whose family received £3000 for a multi-million-pound house on Berlin's Park Lane)?  There are also moments of crassness.  The story that give us the title, Anything That Flies, is numbing; deeply distressing. Within minutes, however, Otto is exhorting Lotte: Then fly, fly.


In conclusion: Judith Burnley's play, set after the fall of the Berlin Wall, bristles with promise but has no clear direction of travel. There's a bit of everything from sexual groping to incontinence and chicken soup. Characterisation is thin. Nonetheless the luminous Issy Van Randwyck lights the stage as Lotte, managing Clive Merrison's unsympathetic Otto with grace.


Photograph: Robert Workman