The world premiere of a new adaptation of The Passenger by Nadya Menuhin, based on the critically acclaimed novel by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, and directed by the multi-award-winning former Artistic Director of the Young Vic, Tim Supple, opens at the renowned Finborough Theatre for a five-week limited season on Monday, 10 February 2025 (Press Nights: Thursday, 13 February 2025 and Friday, 14 February 2025 at 7.30pm).
The Passenger stars Ben Fox (Mother Courage (Southwark Playhouse), Troilus and Cressida and Bedroom Farce (Theatr Cymru), Blitz (Steve McQueen, Apple TV+); Eric MacLennan (Summer and Smoke (Duke of York’s Theatre and Almeida Theatre), Three Sisters (Almeida Theatre), Brave New World and 1984 (Creation Theatre Company)); Dan Milne (More Grimm Tales, The Jungle Book, As I Lay Dying and Twelfth Night (The Young Vic), Grimm Tales (The Young Vic and International Tour), The Comedy of Errors (Royal Shakespeare Company)); Robert Neumark Jones (One Jewish Boy (Old Red Lion Theatre and Trafalgar Studios), The Mikvah Project (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), A Very Royal Scandal (Amazon MGM Studios)); Kelly Price (Grantchester, Endeavour (ITV), Flowers for Mrs Harris (Riverside Studios), The Sex Party and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Menier Chocolate Factory)).
Shot through with Hitchcockian tension, The Passenger is the terrifyingly absurd story of Otto Silbermann, a criminal on the run who hasn’t committed a crime.
Kristallnacht, Berlin, November 1938. The streets of Germany are an orgy of state-sanctioned violence.
As Nazi storm troopers batter down his door, respected businessman Otto flees his home and finds himself plunged into a new world order, his life dissolved overnight.
Betrayed by family, friends and colleagues, and desperately trying to conceal his Jewish identity, he takes train after train across Germany in a race to escape his homeland that is no longer home…
23 year old Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938 in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht. Rediscovered 70 years later, The Passenger became an international hit, was translated into over twenty languages and was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller more than 80 years after it was originally published.
Playwright Nadya Menuhin makes her full-length debut at the Finborough Theatre. She studied languages at University College London, and currently works as a literary agent. She was part of the Royal Court Theatre Writers’ Group, mentored by Stef Smith, and BBC Writersroom London Voices cohort. Her previous plays include I, Mother (Fuel Residency at Druid Theatre, Galway), The Second Rule (Mercury Theatre, Colchester) and Tremors, starring Tamsin Greig (Online for Bitter Pill Theatre).
