Travelling Light

Synopsis

In a remote village in Eastern Europe, around 1900, the young Motl Mendl is entranced by the flickering silent images on his father's cinematograph. Bankrolled by Jacob, the ebullient local timber merchant, and inspired by Anna, the girl sent to help him make moving pictures of their village, he stumbles on a revolutionary way of story-telling. Forty years on, Motl - now a famed American film director - looks back on his early life and confronts the cost of fulfilling his dreams..

Our Review:

John Dixon - 3 April 2012

Lets imagine that the birth of the cinema happened by accident in a Jewish village in Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century and we have the basis for Travelling Light.

The story revolves around Moti Mendi (Damien Molony) returning home after the death of his father and was fascinated by the cinematography equipment he found waiting for him. Timber merchant Jacob (Antony Sher) becomes so engrossed in the films, he literally bank rolls Moti to produce more. All the while Moti is learning so much from Jacob, the villagers and Anna ([Lauren O’Neil]) who he was falling in love with, that he leaves for Hollywood and becomes a leading film maker in the 1930’s.

This is a National Theatre production in which Nicholas Wright’s play seamlessly transports us from America to Eastern Europe and back as Moti (the elder is played by Paul Jesson) tells us his life story. A lot of the story is humorous and the scenes where the villagers help making a movie...

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