Number 8 Community Arts Centre

National Theatre Live: Travelling Light

Thursday 9th February 2012

7.00pm

Written by Nicholas Wright

Presented by National Theatre Live

"How had a twenty-two-year–old pretentious layabout made a discovery that would elude every other cinematic pioneer for years to come?"

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 the famed American film director Maurice Montgomery – looks back on his early life and confronts the cost of fulfilling his dreams, both to himself and those he left behind.

"I know it was in the picture. I made the picture and now the cow’s getting paid and I’m not!"

 

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; and a haunting look at the stories we tell about our own lives. The award-winning Antony Sher returns to the National to play Jacob.

Latecomers will not be permitted until a convenient break in the performance.


Tickets: £11.50, Students £10

Running time: 150mins (inc. interval)


What the critics said:

Michael Billington, The Guardian

4 out of 5 stars

'a love-letter to the movies and an appealingly intelligent evocation of the Jewish folk culture that formed the basis of American cinema.'

'... 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.'

 

Charles Spencer, The Telegraph

'...charming and funny...'

'...inventive and amusing...'