The End of Everything Ever

Last year NIE gave me one of my Fringe highlights with their wonderful show Past Half Remembered. Here they return to the same sort of story-telling with music, to tell of the wartime experiences of one girl who came to Britain as part of the Kindertransport.

Agatha is six, living in Berlin, where her favourite game is when her Jewish family hide in the cupboard while she plays at being the policeman searching for them. Suddenly she is being put on a train and sent to a foreign country with only her beloved stuffed toy Milos for company.

On the train she nervously eats her label and so begins her wartime life of new identities, alien language and inedible food until the time comes for her return to her utterly changed home.

As before, this is a gloriously funny show with much multiple playing. I don’t want to insult the human cast, but the cupboard shows great versatility, metamorphosing into train, house, lift and railway station with only a slight move around the stage.

The cast are only listed in the programme as a group, so here are some highlights with no names allocated. The wonderfully disorganised, organising father. The train guard who suddenly gets a hysterical touch of German expressionist cinema. The tram ride with Agatha’s dangerous chatter. The Englishman who constantly tries to correct Agatha’s German. The mouthful of cake that threatens the audience.

And always at the centre big-eyed, innocent, vulnerable Agatha, clutching the gloriously characterful Milos to her, misunderstanding, being misunderstood and finally arriving at the simply staged, inevitable, devastating ending.

There’s a lifetime of laughter and tears packed into this 70 minutes – utterly wonderful.