Otto Silbermann (Robert Neumark Jones) has a successful business, he has a German, non-jewish wife and he doesn’t look jewish.  But he has a large red J stamped on his passport and that means that he is being hunted.  This remarkable play has been adapted for the stage by Nadya Menuhin, granddaughter of the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin, from a long undiscovered novel The Passenger written in 1938 by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, a jewish man who was trying to escape Nazi Germany in the 1930s. 

The novel Der Reisende became a Sunday Times bestseller in 2021 after being found and published after 80 years in 2018.  The author’s own life is reflected upon in the novel as he escaped from Germany, only to be interned as an enemy alien in the Isle of Man in 1940, sent to another internment camp in Australia and allowed back to the UK in 1942.  He travelled on the MV Abosso reclassified as a “friendly alien” but all 362 people onboard were lost when it was torpedoed by a German U boat including the 27 year old Ulrich Boschwitz. 

The Passenger is directed by Tim Supple, whose productions I haven’t seen since the South Asian fused The Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Roundhouse in 2007.  He is very welcome back for the remarkable physicality of The Passenger and many of his previous plays.  It is a real tribute to The Finborough, now once more with a bar/restaurant downstairs, that this tiny theatre mines theatrical gemstones and creates such memorable drama.