Well, Christmas lunch is assured at the National; the turkey has already arrived. In a perverse piece of programming, we have a 100-year-old slice of German expressionism for Christmas. It could have worked, I suppose, but even a hot writer like Dennis (Matilda) Kelly, the director of one of the NT’s great Christmas hits, Coram Boy (Melly Still) and the-designer-with-a-magic-touch – Soutra Gilmour – can’t bring this turkey back to life.
Our protagonist is a bank cashier who runs off with 60,000 marks (£900k today, the programme tells us) after becoming a bit besotted with an Italian woman who visits his bank. In one day, he goes in search of the meaning of life, starting in the Italian woman’s hotel room, moving to a field of snow, on to a velodrome (where he offers the lot as prize money, but abandons the idea because the royals turn up and dampen the atmosphere), a sex club and a mission hall…..and it all ends in tears. The truth is, wherever he goes, the play goes nowhere. When you resist the temptation to quit at the interval, it’s a very long 2.5 hours.
The inventive staging and design do their best (there was so much going on in the opening scene, I didn’t quite know where to look) but it’s not enough. The actors work very hard, particularly Adam Godley as the bank clerk, but they’re flogging a dead horse too. There was much silence in the auditorium – disbelief? boredom? sleep? (it certainly felt like a dream at times). I hope the rest of the NT’s Christmas lunch tastes better; the turkey’s tasteless.
Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog 
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