BERLIN by Joanna Murray-Smith at Flight Path Theatre

BERLIN by Joanna Murray-Smith is a romantic thriller set against the overpowering shadow of history. Drawing on her own family’s experience with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, Murray-Smith wrote BERLIN wondering what it was like “to live in a city so engaged with its own historical crimes, its own human failing.

Developed and produced as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s NEXT STAGE Writers’ Program in 2021, Storm the Barricade Productions is bringing this important Australian play – in a brand-new production – to Sydney for the first time.

Set in contemporary Berlin, the play is focused on Australian abroad Tom, who meets German bartender Charlotte in a trendy underground Berlin bar. When she invites him to stay the night, ideas are exchanged, intimate secrets are revealed, and desire is ignited, but a terrible secret from the past threatens to unravel their strong connection.

Directed and produced by Peta Downes, BERLIN is designed by Megan Venhoek, with lighting design by Capri Harris, sound design by Emily Clements and features performers Harry Reid and Olivia Xegas. The play requires stamina and discipline from Reid and Xegas, who are on stage together for the whole 80-minutes and must sustain a strong level of intimacy and emotional engagement

For Reid, the challenge of playing Tom is embodying a character who is “driven by some pretty dark and conflicting motivations” while finding “new depths of honesty, spontaneity and vulnerability” as an actor. Xegas agrees that she is also driven to play Charlotte with “authenticity and the nuance that is so brilliantly detailed in the script” but her main acting challenge is “playing someone who is not Australian and exists in a different world and culture to me”.

Cultural awareness, particularly about the Holocaust and the political milieu of Germany and the EU, also plays a big part in the play. Downes explains that while the play uses a one-night encounter between strangers as its premise

it’s not just about two people having sex. The intimacy that the play explores is also to do with intergenerational trauma and how that pain is carried forward in our bodies and our psyches. The characters are trying to make sense of the world that they live in and how that impacts them individually and as a potential couple.

Season Details

Venue: Flight Path Theatre| Marrickville
Date: 09-19 Oct2024

For more information click HERE