The Stage

Travelling Light

Published Thursday 19 January 2012 at 11:15 by Mark Shenton

In Ragtime, the 1998 Broadway musical being revived at Regent’s Park this summer, there’s a character called Tateh, a Jewish emigrant from a Russian shtetl who makes it big as a director of Hollywood movies. Nicholas Wright’s new play at the National could be his back story, but Travelling Light is, despite its title, surprisingly heavy going, as it traces the early days of black and white silent film-making with a dogged determination that is full of texture but no tension.

Damien Molony (Moti) and Lauren O'Neil (Anna) in Travelling Light by Nicholas Wright at the Lyttelton, National Theatre (previous picture shows Antony Sher as Jacob Bindel) Photo: Tristram Kenton

Though director Nicholas Hytner gives it some animating colour and Grant Olding’s beautiful score lends it a wash of yearning sound, too much of it is scripted and acted with the over-the-top exaggeration of silent movie captioning. In particular, it seems to pitch Antony Sher into a default performance of heavily-accented mannerisms as the illiterate local timber merchant who becomes the improbable financier of the first silent movie being made in his village that is, unusually for this fine actor, almost embarrassing to watch. He seems to be doing a dry-run to play Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

There are some equally busy, unsubtle contributions from those that surround him, though the central relationship of the 22-year-old Motl, who becomes the film’s director, and Lauren O’Neil as his assistant who helps him edit the footage, has a truthful sincerity.

We waited for ages for a new Nicholas Wright play to come along and then, in less than a six-month period, three have arrived in quick succession - Rattigan’s Nijinksy at Chichester, The Last of the Duchess at Hampstead and now this. I’m full of admiration for his productivity and profile, but it’s a pity there’s not much of a play in this one.