Berlin

Georgia Latchford (Charlotte) and Lachlan Hamill (Tom) make the most of Joanna Murray-Smith’s intellectual, witty, sexy and intense script. While it starts as a usual boy meets girl seduction tale, its setting in Berlin provides a backdrop as layers and layers of thought and meaning are peeled away until a very uncomfortable truth is uncovered. Both characters have deep personal wounds which are echoed in the national German wound of the Holocaust.

Charlotte, a Berliner who works in a night club, offers Tom a place to stay overnight when he says his accommodation booking is not valid. Together, as they dance around their mutual attraction and reveal snippets of themselves, they grapple with their personal stories of grief. These stories raise the difficult territory of making a personal choice to take responsibility even though not personally guilty of any wrongdoing. This frames the choice they need to make about the future of their relationship and raises questions and attempts answers about how German people live with the history of the Holocaust.

The direction by Erica Chestnut elegantly manages the physicality of the characters’ mutual attraction and the script’s demands for extended verbal interplay. The setting is simple and provides all that is needed. Music and sound, together with lighting are used sparingly but with good effect.

Joanna Murray-Smith has offered a fine piece of writing and the company takes the audience with them to explore the important questions it raises.

Ruth Ritchie

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