BERLIN HANOVER EXPRESS. To 4 April.

London.

BERLIN HANOVER EXPRESS
by Ian Kennedy Martin.

Hampstead Theatre To 4 April 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm.& 25 March 2.30pm.
Audio-described 28 March 3pm.
Captioned 31 March.
Post-show Discussion (with speech to text transcription) 31 March.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.

TICKETS: 020 7722 9301.
www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 14 March.

Express provides a first-class dramatic journey.
This patient, well-constructed play matches the thrillerish implication of its title with a sense of character and the dynamics of the world outside. It is perfectly acted, and impeccably directed by former Hampstead boss Michael Rudman, while Paul Farnsworth’s set captures the spacious dullness of an office in 1942 Berlin. Between scenes, archive film provides its own journey from Nazi triumphalism to early indications of defeat.

After the steadily intensifying first act, it might be the second has to try a bit too hard to make events happen, with a few too many exits and re-entrances. But this is a minor matter in such a satisfying play and detailed production.

Ian Kennedy Martin’s characters include two patriotic idealists, who see the other pair as threatening the ideals upon which their respective re-born nations, Ireland and Germany, are founded. They are the least sympathetic characters. Yet even the Nazi Kollvitz, who loathes Communists beyond even Jews, genuinely believes in the social value of a new order that has conquered financial chaos and poverty.

At work in neutral Ireland’s extraterritorial Berlin legation, earnest Protestant Mallin sees his deputy, wayward Catholic O’Kane as typifying the ruin of nationalist ideals. And O’Kane, who becomes a traveller on the title train, as well as the one making its route a moral metaphor, discovers his own failing. Only young tea-lady Christe finds her own moral strength when the lies she’s spun slide away.

Owen McConnell’s creates the slick-haired O’Kane’s happy surface and ultimate failure, while Peter Moreton’s Kollvitz displays both prurient hesitancy and quietly bullying insistence. Sean Campion’s Mallin, whose tap-tap typing closes the play with a bureaucratic regularity set against broadcast Mozart, increases his stoop and office-bound stiffness as events proceed, suggesting his spoken confidence may not be deeply-rooted.

Isla Cater moves from bowed subservience to find dignity in the face of humiliation as each act ends. There could be a voyeurism to the first act’s conclusion. But the integrity of writing and performance ensure the audience holds its collective breath, terrified and near-embarrassed at a silent contest between terror and this young woman’s resilience.

Mallin: Sean Campion.
Christe: Isla Carter.
O’Kane: Owen McDonnell.
Kollvitz: Peter Moreton.

Director: Michael Rudman.
Designer: Paul Farnsworth.
Lighting: David Howe.
Sound: Colin Pink.
Dance instructor: Dirk Weiler.
Assistant director: Joao De Sousa.

2009-03-15 16:33:11