Use the form below to search for Travelling Light tickets on your desired date.
Performance times are: Feb 6,7,8,16,17,18,20,21,28,29, Mar 1,2,3,5, Apr 24,25,26, May 2,3,4,5,7,11,12,18,19,21,22,29,30,21, Jun 1,2 at 19:30. Feb 18,21,29, Mar 3,6, Apr 26, May 3,5,12,19,31, Jun 2 Mats 14:15. Feb 19, May 6,13,20 Mats at 15:00.
Synopsis
Following Vincent in Brixton and The Reporter, Nicholas Wright's new play is a funny and fascinating tribute to the Eastern European immigrants who became major players in Hollywood's golden age.
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.
How had a twenty-two-year old pretentious layabout made a discovery that would elude every other cinematic pioneer for years to come?
Please note: There are audio-described performances on Friday 2 March at 7.30pm and Saturday 3 March at 2.15pm.
There is a captioned performance on Wednesday 29 February at 7.30pm.
Dates: Opens 18 January 2012. Feb 6,7,8,16,17,18,20,21,28,29, Mar 1,2,3,5, Apr 24,25,26, May 2,3,4,5,7,11,12,18,19,21,22,29,30,21, Jun 1,2 at 19:30. Feb 18,21,29, Mar 3,6, Apr 26, May 3,5,12,19,31, Jun 2 Mats 14:15. Feb 19, May 6,13,20 Mats at 15:00.
The National Theatre production of Nicholas Wright’s Travelling Light - the first of two plays Antony Sher will star in at the National over the next two years - opened last night at the NT Lyttelton (18 January, previews from 11 January 2012).
Wright's play celebrates the large number of Eastern European émigrés who helped created Hollywood's golden age in the mid-20th century.
Sher plays Jacob, an ebullient timber-merchant whose encouragement of a young man’s enthusiasm for cinematography leads to success far beyond their remote Eastern European village.
The play, which continues in rep until 6 March 2012, attracted a broad spread of critical opinion...
"Nicholas Wright’s beguiling alternative account of the birth of the moving picture industry opens on stage just as the ravishing silent film The Artist garners a sheaf of award nominations … Hytner’s creative team rise superbly to the challenge of showing monochrome film against the shtetl backdrop. Bob Crowley’s sepia tumble of roofs and warm wood interiors are complemented by the autumnal tones of Vicki Mortimer’s costumes and Bruno Poet’s lighting. The cast have huge fun in Jon Driscoll’s gorgeously pastiche film footage and there’s a whole new cast of actors in the rushes of the nascent feature … Antony Sher, fresh from playing a self-hating Jew in Broken Glass, clearly revels in his terrific comic creation of the larger-than-life Jacob – a man very much at home in his skin and his position as community elder."
"In suggesting that shooting in the shtetl offered a prototype of Hollywood pressures, Wright sometimes over-advertises his ironies. When Jacob outlines instantly recognisable scenarios for future films and when Motl declares he wants to escape to America because he won't be tortured by budgets, we laugh all too knowingly. But what Wright captures vividly is the pioneering belief that films could be ‘noble, miraculous things’ and the excitement of discovering new techniques … What also gives the play its dynamism is that we see, in Nicholas Hytner's immensely skilful production, the visual evidence. Bob Crowley's set, with its Chagall-like silhouettes of shtetl roofs, gives ample scope for Jon Driscoll's fine video and projections … It is Antony Sher who steals the honours as the ebullient Jacob, a self-consciously wise peasant who seems to have stepped out of a Sholom Aleichem story. It is one of those performances in which the actor seems to have expanded to twice his usual size."
"Wright's unabashedly sentimental piece is replete with folksy humour and features a commanding performance from Antony Sher. Steeped in nostalgia, this is theatre which advertises its interest in the past … In Nicholas Hytner's well-cast production there are fine ensemble scenes. Yet it's a little hard to believe the villagers haven't previously experienced the magic of storytelling, so the excitement with which they greet the narrative possibilities of film appears a touch improbable … There is poised work from Lauren O'Neil as Anna, and Damien Molony is engaging as Motl. Sher is explosively energetic as Jacob, but his full-throttle interpretation ultimately feels too broad. There are alluring projections by Jon Driscoll, but Wright's play doesn't trust the power of images as much as it should - and as much as cinema does.”
"The adjective ‘cheesy’ is insufficient for the new play at the Royal National Theatre. It may star Sir Antony Sher. It may have been directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner. It may have been basted by all the love and money of a big cast and a luxuriant set. But the thing is theatrical gorgonzola - laughably cliched, weirdly wooden, incredible in the literal sense … A couple of brief scenes in Hollywood come as a relief but soon descend into far-fetched coincidence … Travelling Light may aspire to reflect the amazing success of Jewish film-makers in America but it fails. It is as hoary as anything you might expect to see on a visit to a living- history tourist attraction in provincial Lithuania. The only surprise was that at the end they did not break into a song from Fiddler on the Roof.”
"The best thing about the show, in my opinion, is the brilliantly punning title which makes me shiver with delight each time I ponder it. It beautifully blends the idea of emigration and of cinematography, bringing out the projection-room shimmer in the phrase ... Great subject matter but the play - and the production - fail to rise to their own piquant occasion. The ironies are handled with a limp obviousness (you couldn't cite this piece in the same breath as, say, Christopher Hampton's play about emigres on the west coast, Tales from Hollywood). Though the Lyttelton is more like a cinema than most theatres, the physical production is bafflingly duff. The twee shtetl skyline in Bob Crowley's design is so dinky and endearing that it makes Barbra Streisand's (rather brilliant) Yentl look like Le Chagrin et La Pitie. I kept thinking that I would like to see this subject explored in the Old Vic tunnels by Robert Lepage."
"Our theatres these days are so full of shows based on old films, from The Wizard of Oz to Legally Blonde, that it is intriguing to see the traffic going the other way for once. But though it is intermittently charming and funny, Travelling Light lacks dramatic depth, and this story of the early days of the movies has nothing like the sweetness or panache of the brilliant new silent movie The Artist … The show is often inventive and amusing, and director Nicholas Hytner has come up with antique looking film of both village life and the narrative movie Mendl makes that is projected onto an on stage screen … More depth and passion are badly needed and throughout the play one is constantly aware that Wright’s play would work much better as a movie than it does in the theatre."
Nicholas Wright’s beguiling alternative account of the birth of the moving picture industry opens on stage just as the ravishing silent film The Artist garners a sheaf of award nominations.
Cleverly incorporating silent film, Wright’s play is both a hymn to the early movie pioneers and an affectionate evocation of life in a Jewish shtetl in Eastern Europe around 1900, conjured notably by a non-Jewish writer in fruitful partnership with Jewish director Nicholas Hytner.
Aspiring young journalist Motl Mendl returns to the shtetl on his father’s death, to find his legacy - the first flickerings of moving images on his cinematograph. At the insistence of wealthy local timber merchant Jacob, Mendl stays, to work first on making moving pictures of shtetl life.
As successful movie mogul Maurice Montgomery (sympathetic Paul Jesson), the middle-aged Mendl tells his story in flashback from Hollywood, so his future is a given.
The fun of Wright’s story is how Mendl and his helpmeet and lover Anna stumble on how to make movies, and the techniques of cutting and montage that bend time itself. Together with the other villagers, led by the ebullient Jacob, they painstakingly work out by trial and error the practicalities of showing and marketing films – and so the cinema is born!
In this climactic comic scene the shtetl movers and shakers, gathered for a preview of Mendl’s prototype documentary, collectively realise the wonderfully corny and melodramatic story of a pregnant servant girl forced to abandon her baby before finding fame as an opera star in what will become Mendl’s first feature film.
In the starring role, intelligent, practical Anna proves she’s a pretty face as well and more than ready for her close up. The play’s second half has more fun with the problems and practicalities of shooting on the ‘set’ of the village. The consequences of Motl and Jacob’s shared attraction to Anna mean life imitates art. And there’s reincorporation in 1930s Hollywood as Maurice discovers Nate Dershowitz, a young unknown he intends to mould into matinee idol Nick Driver.
Hytner’s creative team rise superbly to the challenge of showing monochrome film against the shtetl backdrop. Bob Crowley’s sepia tumble of roofs and warm wood interiors are complemented by the autumnal tones of Vicki Mortimer’s costumes and Bruno Poet’s lighting. The cast have huge fun in Jon Driscoll’s gorgeously pastiche film footage and there’s a whole new cast of actors in the rushes of the nascent feature. The falls and rhythms of Grant Olding’s score, (he also wrote the plangent cello music for the recent production of Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass) evoke Jewish Eastern Europe and the sentimentality of silent film.
Antony Sher, fresh from playing a self-hating Jew in Broken Glass, clearly revels in his terrific comic creation of the larger-than-life Jacob – a man very much at home in his skin and his position as community elder. Irish actor Damien Moloney’s Mendl captures his sometimes selfish single-mindedness and comic exasperation at having to explain the language of film to a ‘focus group’ of villagers.
In Lauren O'Neil’s Anna, Mendl – and Hytner – have indeed found a luminous star, with a bright intelligence on stage and real movie-icon charisma on screen. And Sue Kelvin as Mendl’s aunt, leading a shtetl-full of larger-than-life characters, is a deliciously big and benign presence, earning appreciative laughter and staying just the right side of caricature.
I have rarely left the NT as disgusted as I was with an actor as I was after this production. The play itself is an oddity: almost nothing happens in the first 2 hours, then the last 20 minutes are full of exposition and plot. Lauren O'Neil - as other reviewers have noted- is wonderful. This could have been a reasonable production, but for the ghastly performance of Antony Sher, who is as out-of-kilter with the production as if he thought he was signing up for the lead and is determined to play his supporting role to the hilt. It's absolutely horrible to watch something so unprofessional. It's pretty good when he's off and the two leads are romantically convincing, but Hytner should never have stood for the biggest upstager since John Woodvine in An Enemy of the People (NT with McKellan) who equally destroyed a subtle performance. - dgr1
27 Feb 12
Travelling Light is like a cross between Fiddler On the Roof and Ragtime without the songs - although there is a boy fiddler (that doesn't look right!). This story of the early days of motion pictures is light and charming in places but it comes as a surprise to learn that the early days of movies could have taken place in a shtetl in deepest Russia. Nicholas Wright's knowing comparison of Anthony Sher's timber merchant to the interference of the Hollywood studio moguls is a bit heavy handedand it's possible to tick off all the cliches being "discovered" - a cinema building, editing, continuity, test screenings, even a casting couch. Sher hams it up outrageously as a hybrid of Topol and Sam Goldwyn but Damien Molony struggles to make the ambitious film-maker Motl engaging or likeable. Lauren O'Neill though is superb as Anna, both on the stage and in the excellent recreations of ancient silent movies. The ending takes coincidence to a high level of schmalz and although Travelling Light is enjoyable in a disposable way it's disappointing after Wright's exceptional Last of the Duchess which was one of the best new plays of last year. - David Baxter
23 Feb 12
This is a work of fiction, and if you take it as that, its charming, amusing, clever and well crafted. Some seem to have taken exception to its hijacking of cinematic history which I’m not sure it’s trying to do.
We’re in an East European Jewish village at the turn of the 20th century when Motl returns from the city after the death of his father. Discovering his father’s photographic and early cinematic equipment, he becomes enthralled with the idea of moving pictures and is encouraged and funded by local businessman Jacob to make a film of people in the village. Despite the somewhat critical reception, the idea of a work of fiction is mooted and enthusiasm goes viral as they embark on its making.
Many of the pioneers of early Hollywood were Jews from this part of the world and indeed we do skip forward to 1936 when Motl has changed his name to Maurice and become a successful director, but I don’t think the play is making any claims to present the true origin of cinema as we know it. It does include the genesis of the business model for public exhibition of films and shows technical discoveries like editing, lighting reflectors, the camera dolly and special effects, but it does so with its tongue in its cheek. We have stereotypes like the interfering producer, corner-cutting production accountant, highly strung director and upstaging actors. There are comments from a preview audience (the beginnings of the focus group) and it even hints at the casting couch!
Bob Crowley’s monochrome design cleverly merges live action with film footage, though it only opens up once to reveal the village exteriors (as a film set in 1936) which seems a bit of a shame. It’s a little slow in the first half, but does pick up pace and draws you in. The performances are a bit stereotypical (Fiddler on the Roof – with a fiddler included!) though I really liked Damien Molony as Motl and Lauren O’Neil as the love interest. The other ladies all engage well – Sue Kelvin as Motl’s aunt, Abigail McKern as Jacob’s wife and Alexis Zegerman as his daughter. This isn’t Anthony Sher’s greatest moment, but his somewhat caricatured Jacob does make you smile and laugh.
If you don’t set your sights too high, it’s an enjoyable couple of hours. The Nicholas’s Wright (playwright) and Hytner (director) have done better work, but this is an enjoyable evening nontheless and I’m glad I went. - Gareth James
08 Feb 12
This play condenses all the early discoveries of dramatic filmmaking techniques into a fable, which unfortunately, is not itself sufficiently dramatic for most of it's running time. The beautiful silent films projected do inspire admiration for the originators of silent film storytelling, so the production works best as a paean to the Jewish artists and artisans who founded Hollywood. The emergence of serious drama in the last twenty minutes or so feels forced and somewhat odd, unearned by appropriate foreshadowing. Anthony Sher is an actor I love, and his big brash shetl-based timber merchant and movie producer is an amusingly overblown and worthy addition to his canon. Lauren O'Neil is a Katherine Turneresque husky-voiced star in the making. This production is very much a mixed bag. - steveatplays
01 Feb 12
I enjoyed this production with a great cast and good as ever Antony Sher. It did remind me a bit of Fiddler on the Roof but then it was based more or less in the same era. - Joe Spiteri
01 Feb 12
First part :OK; good ideas and excellent visual...but the second half...poor. And Antony Sher??? What is that? "A Fiddler on the Roof"?
What happened Nicholas Hytner? - Marcelo
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