NIVELLI'S War, which opened in a revival of a Cahoots NI production at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast on Friday night, is an affecting play about the long legacy of conflict.
But Charles Way’s drama opens with a bit of magic. We meet the eponymous magician, the Great Nivelli (magnificent Dan Gordon), warming up for a comeback show on a dark stage with a red balloon. Soon we realize the whole story is set inside his head. As Nivelli steps back into his boyhood memories in Frankfurt, the dry ice swirls. The special effects in this production are genuinely special and the lighting by Sinead McKenna and Sabine Dargent’s set make us feel we are entering a different world.
What is clever about the opening scenes is their portrayal of the familiar motifs of the Second World War – Ernst’s mother feeding him her soup, life in the air raid shelter and the incessant bombing – from the other side with the Americans and British as the enemy. The plot is based on the true story of Herbert Levin, a Jewish performer who used tricks to survive wartime persecution. But he has a sidekick in this version, young Ernst (brilliant Jack Archer) who is evacuated from wartime danger to his aunt Sophie’s rural home which proves dangerous in another way.
This not so Grimm fairy tale then shows us Ernst abandoned for the second time by troubled Sophie (Maggie Cronin on good form). He has to face loss and the dark, only to encounter an unlikely saviour, a man on the run. Nothing is quite what it seems yet as the boy and man bicker, with Ernst dubbing him “fox”, that is the thief and outsider, a relationship develops. The passages with talented Bob Kelly as Mr H and Ernst on the road going home are memorable.
The play is well directed by Paul Bosco McEneaney using a nicely European performance style. In terms of the anti-prejudice message, this comes across well when Mr H reveals his true ancestry and we know why he has spent years with his hands up.
