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<\/a>Of course, the piece takes artistic liberties; it\u2019s not purely documentary. And yet, there\u2019s plenty of documentary material here too: fragments from Reiniger\u2019s films, which \u2014 even almost a century later \u2014 make your heart skip a beat with their tenderness, precision, and startling modernity. The play also uses recordings of Reiniger\u2019s own voice in her later years, as she reflects on her life and craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tiny square stage of Southwark\u2019s studio space transforms seamlessly into a subway carriage, a smoky cabaret, or a cramped animation studio. There\u2019s a projector, a screen, a lamp, and delicate paper cut-out puppets. Like Andersen\u2019s little ballerina, they\u2019re so light they threaten to flutter into the flame at the slightest draft \u2014 much like the people caught in the terrifying historical moment of the late 1930s to mid-40s.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a>The actors play animators. If you know these eccentric types, it\u2019s both hilarious and tender to watch. They are strange, almost otherworldly, half-saints. They scream in horror when someone tries to open a window (remember that delicate ballerina and the draft?). They pull their hands away from the animation stand with the same unmistakable gesture as doctors stepping back when they shout, \u201cClear!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The people surrounding Lotte aren\u2019t played naturalistically \u2014 they move like animated characters themselves. Each has their own sharp, exaggerated plasticity. Each will one day become great, earning their entry in the encyclopedia of world cinema. But here they\u2019re young, poor, and perpetually hungry.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a>There\u2019s Karl Koch (Halvor Schultz), bespectacled, awkward, meticulously precise, deeply romantic \u2014 and Lotte\u2019s future husband. There\u2019s the great Berthold Bartosch (Richard Durning), huge, curly-haired, nervous, moving half-step, half-hop, gesturing like a bird flapping its wings. And there\u2019s Walter Ruttmann (Owen Bleach), with his straw hat and red mustache, a Van Gogh figure emanating a strange heaviness \u2014 fittingly, Bleach later embodies the terrifying Censor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The theme of censorship and fascism creeping over Germany a century ago is rendered with chilling accuracy. At first, no one pays attention, no one believes in this bogeyman under the bed. That\u2019s how it starts: they laugh, they dismiss it \u2014 until books are seized, names erased from posters, films banned, artists imprisoned and destroyed. The audience chuckles when the farcical censor and his goons in black caps strut about, like devils on strings. A moment more and the production might tip into grotesque, almost propaganda, but it keeps its balance \u2014 like a ballerina poised on pointe.<\/p>\n\n\n