Review: ANYTHING THAT FLIES - Jermyn Street Theatre

Such is the somewhat unlikely premise of Judith Burnley's first stage play ANYTHING THAT FLIES, which has just opened at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Unfortunately, what could have been an exploration of two tortured souls who each suffered immeasurably as a result of the Nazi's taking power, never ignites into anything beyond a fairly tedious series of conversations where personal recollections are regurgitated to the other - eliciting either no response, or at best a banal observation before the lights dim heralding a scene change. The weakness in the writing presents such a fundamental flaw, that director Alice Hamilton has had to resort to dramatic flourishes in an attempt to imbue the piece with moments of pathos and gravitas. Unfortunately they are rarely convincing and more often ridiculous and inconsistent with what follows. But more of this later...

Clive Merrison plays Otto, a viola player who was studying in London as Germany succumbed to Hitler's power grab. We learn that his family owned a factory and five-story town house, and had foolishly believed they were untouchable, despite their Jewish heritage. In his dotage he listens to Brahms played through the speakers which he invented after the war and which will be his legacy to the world - one of several foolish details which detract from any sense of reality. He conjures shadowy figures who he imagines have come to take him away to join his family who were gassed in the prison camps. I suspect that the verbose dialogue was a major factor in Merrison not being fully 'off book' on press night, resulting in several furtive references to cue cards  squirrelled into pockets. I found myself sympathising with his predicament. Issy van Randwyck as Lottie subtly demonstrates her usual assured stagecraft and timing (honed over many years as a key member of the musical comedy trio Fascinating Aïda) and seemed largely unfazed when having to traverse the cluttered and 'accident-waiting-to-happen' set.

Lottie appears neither poor nor in need of a cause to occupy her time, yet she cooks and cares for Otto whilst enduring his repeated, sneering references to (what he believes is) her Nazi heritage. She also accepts with only minor rebukes, several episodes of physical groping of her breasts and one particularly graphic incident where she has to don rubber gloves to clear-up faeces smeared all over the floor after Otto defecates due to a bowel mishap on the way to the toilet. Burnley's script has them chat unabashedly during this episode and afterwards over a cup of tea! At one point, instead of signing papers which would result in reparations being paid to his family by the German government, Otto inexplicably sits as a curmudgeonly invalid tearing the document into little pieces. He then leaps out of his chair, throwing them above his head, where they flutter to the floor and land on slightly awkward audience members in the front row. What should have been an effective theatrical flourish, manifests as an embarrassingly lame spectacle, which is sadly indicative of the whole.

Novel writing and script writing are two distinctly different disciplines and if Burnley is to match the success she has achieved in the former, she will need to develop a less ponderous and wittier dialogue style if she is to achieve realistic character development for the stage. Neither Otto nor Lottie were sufficiently interesting or likeable for this reviewer to care what happened next, which under the circumstances is a disappointing result.