Lotte’s Journey

Published Wednesday 31 October 2007 at 11:00 by Katie Colombus

The enormity of impending death that ties together six characters during a train ride to Auschwitz, will always be difficult to convey.

Lotte’s Journey tells the story of a young, female Jewish artist who died during the holocaust.

Within her personal story is the account of her companions - a kindly old couple, cantankerous widow, and embittered war journalist.

The claustrophobic set and shadowed lighting of the carriage taking the passengers to their death camp conveys well the sense of imprisonment, fear and frustration at this waiting game - wanting the journey to be over, but never wanting to arrive.

On the other side of the stage, their history shorts are played out, as is the recurrent theme of ‘leben, oder theater…’ - life, or theatre - so prevalent in the work of Charlotte Salomon.

While some of the cast cope admirably with their varied roles - in particular Elizabeth Elvin and Max Digby - Selina Chilton as Lottie, for all her open featured, clear spoken intent, seems to have trouble differentiating between her 20-year-old self and her seven-year-old self. Her statuesque methods sometimes come across as wooden, and lines that should be meaningful and poignant, seem hurried over. Dominic Power as Amadeus similarly trips over his most powerful lines and their chemistry is flat.

With such strong history and traumatic subject matter - let alone grander concepts of the artists’ ability to create being born from the pain of existence - the structure of the play risks falling into a series of monologues.

This play is more easily forgotten than the subject of the production itself.