Writer: Akimbo Theatre
Director: Rosanna Mallinson
Enlightening and exhilarating, this fast-paced production celebrates the early career and under-appreciated innovations of pioneering animator Lotte Reiniger. Weimar era (1918-1933) Berlin, with its vibrant artistic community and newly minted entrepreneurs, proved fertile ground for Reiniger’s inventive work: bringing cutout silhouettes to long-form life. The show begins with a provocative back-screened statement: “In 1938, Walt Disney made the first feature-length animation. Or did he?”
Reiniger (played throughout by the versatile, charismatic Lexie Baker) in old age hobbles onstage and is approached by an archivist: “Berlin, 1920s? Let’s give it a spin.” The screen sets the scene as Reiniger’s voice describes her early life: “I had a talent for cutting things out quickly with scissors.”
The old Reiniger is renewed into exuberant, bouncy youth with a mid-stage quick change. The Akimbo players, infectiously enthusiastic, leap around with random pieces of kit to create the train that’ll deliver her to Berlin’s ‘Institut für Kulturforschung’, experimental animation HQ.
There she meets her three white-coated colleagues, verging on the lunatics that have taken over the asylum. Avant-garde film artist Berthold Bartosch is played with jumpy eccentricity by Richard Durning. He’s caught calling his animation table ‘Brunhilde’ and is clearly unsettled by actual women. Carl Koch (Halvor Schultz), in his nerdy round specs, is also unnerved by Reiniger, stuttering a plea for her not to open the windows and imperil his storyboard. Walther Ruttmann (Owen Bleach), loud and confident, completes the gang. He’s happy to hear that he and Reiniger have friends in common, but it’s only when she snips out proficient silhouettes of the trio that they warm to her.
“How would you like to be our assistant?” Reiniger only accepts the tea-making, note-taking role once the boys say she can use their animation table. The team’s painstaking scene-snapping work is projected on-screen, allowing for appreciation of their techniques as well as exposition: diagrams and news clippings show inflation is on the rise, as is Hitler.
Spurred on by the boys’ critique of her ‘old-fashioned’ silhouetting, Reiniger discovers she can add unprecedented scenic depth and tracking movement – parallax – to her moving images by arranging glass plates beneath a camera in separate layers and applying differing detail on each: the multiplane technique. Bartosch is delighted: “The boys will be so proud of me… I mean… you.”
Client praise for Reiniger’s silhouette films, and a whopping cheque, help her to win the boys over to making a feature film, with stories that can only be depicted by animation, synched with music. She’s settled on the 1001 Arabian Nights, with its genies and flying carpets, and hit on a funding scheme: “We can find an investor at the Cabaret”.
Cue slapstick from buff, gyrating bouncers Hans and Hans (Halvor Schultz and Richard Durning), frisking each other excitedly. Top-hatted entrepreneur Louis Hagen (Owen Bleach) appears, followed by Reiniger and trust-funded, gum-chewing Yankee Junior (Richard Durning) who pays the exorbitant ticket fees (“A week’s food!”) for the three of them. Luscious trans dancer Candy (Flo Wiedenbach) throws shapes as Reiniger chats up Louis, who’s into “Luxury cruise liners and motion pictures”. Candy muscles in, prompting Louis to give her roses and a dramatic kiss.
There’s drunken/sober contrast fun as Reiniger brings Candy, Louis and Junior back to the Institut and attempts to pitch her full-length feature at them while Koch and Barthold try to stop them from destroying the place with wild Charleston dancing, playfighting and unguarded smoking.
Reiniger and Koch become enamoured amid the work’s intimate intricacy and fall out over the best response to the hypocritical censor (played with oleaginous, heel-clicking exactitude by Owen Bleach) and his suspiciously tactile goons. She’s under pressure to cut a scene where two men kiss: “He called it a sickness… I want the children to know they can love whoever they want.”
Struggle, triumph, conflagration and downfall ensue as Nazism engulfs Berlin, but Reiniger and her work miraculously persist, defying Fascist erasure. Thankfully. The short screenings of Prince Achmed shown within the play are breathtakingly beautiful and moving, delivered with Reiniger’s characteristic delicacy and charm.
Re-discovering the Reiniger legacy is a real coup for the Akimbo group: it’s almost as if the films had been lying in wait to illuminate the iniquities and dangers of the modern era. And their physical theatre action, alongside clever sets, lighting, and music, excels at injecting exuberant joy into what could have been a dull, technical story.
Hopefully, the lost avenues Akimbo have uncovered will be more thoroughly investigated in time for the 100th anniversary of her film Prince Achmed: 2026.
For now, The Animator, as lovingly constructed as one of Reiniger’s films, is an accomplished glimpse into her technicolour life and times. The only thing holding it back is the (relatively) short format: there’s something even more compelling brewing here.
Runs until 30 August 2025
