Anything That Flies

Jermyn Street Theatre, London ****

© Robert Workman, Clive Merrison (Otto) and Issy van Randwyck (Lottie), serving his every need with quiet patience...

© Robert Workman, Clive Merrison (Otto) and Issy van Randwyck (Lottie), serving his every need with quiet patience…

When I read that Anything that Flies was her debut play by writer, Judith Burnley, I naturally assumed it was a young playwright being given a big chance by Jermyn Street’s new artistic director, Tom Littler.

Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Judith Burnley, it turns out, is someone I’ve known for years but had no idea was an already acclaimed novelist and editor, let alone a playwright. Anything that Flies very particularly shows you should never jump to conclusions. People are not always what they seem.

That was a lesson taught to me many years ago but if you didn’t know it, Anything that Flies would bring it home to you in a way you’re unlikely to forget in a hurry. And may indeed go on haunting you, as indeed, the past haunts its two characters, Otto and Lottie.

Germans both, ostensibly they couldn’t be more different. In Alice Hamilton’s production, in the Jermyn Street theatre’s tiny, boutique surround, the designer – designers in this case, Emily Adamson and Neil Irish – have carefully and with absolute precision transformed the small square space into a piece of old Germany.

© Robert Workman, Issy van Randwyck (Lottie), Clive Merrison (Otto)

© Robert Workman, Issy van Randwyck (Lottie), Clive Merrison (Otto)

Records, pictures, furniture – everything exudes another time, pre WWII before fascism and Hitler swept away not only six million Jews but with it, cultural values and a way of being.

Otto and Lottie are both exiles from their land – he a Jewish musician and devoted Anglophile, settled in this country for many years, who came to study music and stayed. Lottie a new arrival, sent by his Israeli-based daughter to be his carer after a stroke, is from an aristocratic German family. To Otto, all Germans who are not Jews are automatically Nazis, responsible for the Holocaust.

© Robert Workman, Clive Merrison as Otto, the old Jewish musician and Anglophile for whom music is the staff of life and `a sticking plaster'...

© Robert Workman, Clive Merrison as Otto, the old Jewish musician and Anglophile for whom music is the staff of life and `a sticking plaster’…

But over the course of the next 90 minutes we learn that is very far from the case. A two-handed drama of psychological nuance and wisdoms, Burnley draws out the differences and the similarities they share under the skin – with the dominating Otto, his capriciousness, his vulnerability and his pain.

A startling, demanding role, it’s magnificently fleshed out by Clive Merrison, querulous one moment, lecherous the next as he attempts to keep some sort of control on his life with fading success; remembering the fate of his family in Buchenwald and his young sister, Elise, opposing his daughter’s attempts to seek reparation and all the time consoled only by a deep and abiding love of music – his `sticking plaster’ he calls it.

As Lottie, Issy van Randwyck is simply astonishing. Endlessly patient, almost subservient, bringing in an endless stream of trays for Otto, cleaning up after his incontinence, it’s a performance of modest but total immersion – a soul under strict rules of decorum that although torn from its moorings and having lost everything in the turmoil of post-war Germany (and a father hanged for being part of the failed Hitler assassination plot) is yet adhering to the codes of her upbringing.

© Robert Workman, Issy van Randwyck as Lottie, patiently caring...

© Robert Workman, Issy van Randwyck as Lottie, patiently caring…

There are so many marvellous, carefully orchestrated moments in Hamilton’s production: Merrison bringing the full weight of disgust to bear on Otto’s exclamation, `Swiss Cottage’ as `that phoney haven for elderly exiles…most of them don’t even speak English and they’ve been here for years and years…they go on believing that life in the old country was Real Life…when we know in every way it’s possible to know, that the very reverse is true.’

Or a line that hums down the wires, that speaks to any exile or indeed any of us hearing the call of years passing – `how can you draw a line under your childhood without severing an artery.’

Together, Burnley, Alice Hamilton, Merrison and van Randwyck have crafted a superb and beautiful epitaph to a lost European culture, one that ruminates most movingly on identity, on Englishness and German-ness and the loss suffered even in the embrace of a new language and culture.

Tom Littler’s tenancy at the Jermyn Street theatre is turning into a quietly undeniable tour de force.

Anything that Flies
A new play by Judith Burnley

Cast:
Otto: Clive Merrison
Lottie: Issy van Randwyck 

Director: Alice Hamilton
Designers: Emily Adamson, Neil Irish
Lighting Designer: Elliot Griggs
Sound Designer: Max Pappenheim
Assistant Director: Tom McClane

Presented by Jermyn Street Theatre

World premiere of Anything that Flies at Jermyn Street Theatre, London, Oct 18, 2017. Runs to Nov 11, 2017

Review published on this site, Oct 28, 2017