The return of chameleonic arthouse darling and Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton to the stage, in a gender-fluid play she first did almost 40 years ago at the same venue with the same production team, is a major event. It’s also, surprisingly, a little bit boring.
Manfred Karge’s 90-minute solo drama concerns a working-class woman, Ella Gericke, who assumes her dead husband Max’s identity and job as a crane operator in 1930s Germany, pragmatically switching between genders through Hitler’s rise, a world war and a divided peace.
