Autumn Approaches
✮✮✮ Maxim Gorky's Summerfolk Deutsches Theater | Berlin directed by Daniela Löffner At first glance, this Deutsches Theater production misreads Maxim Gorki’s Summerfolk. The play is deep and sprawling: a great Russian novel that spills onto an expansive stage, an endless summer garden party filled with sorrow and longing. But, whilst Daniela Löffner’s rigid aesthetic is initially testing, it is that same aesthetic that elevates her production later on, drawing out the taste o
The American Struggle
✮✮✮ Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire Berliner Ensemble | Berlin directed by Michael Thalheimer When working on classic plays, Michael Thalheimer has a reputation for steadfastly cutting and condensing text, yet he never alters or adds to what he’s been given. We see the effectiveness of this method in this canny production of A Streetcar Named Desire. With a play that is so of its time, one would expect to hear references or turns of phrase that jar, but this is p
Now We'll Hear From the Opposition
✮✮✮ 1/2 Oliver Frljić's Gorki - Alternative für Deutschland? Maxim Gorki Theater | Berlin directed by Oliver Frljić There is a trend in Oliver Frljić’s work of confronting the audience with the hypocrisy of their bourgeois, theatre-going lives. In Our Violence, Your Violence, which premiered at the Croatian National Theatre in 2016, for example, he criticises the audience for continuing with normal, inane activities while millions are dying in the Middle East and continue to
One Weakness and You Are Done For!
✮✮✮ 1/2 Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan Schaubühne | Berlin directed by Peter Kleinert Is it possible to be a good, upstanding person in today’s world or does the lust and corruption of those around us compel dishonesty and selfishness just to get by? These are the questions that plague the young prostitute, Shen Te of Szechwan. When through literal divine intervention she secures enough funds to open a modest tobacco shop, she must soon invent a cold-hearted male cousin
Bitter Humour & Bitter Truth
✮✮✮✮ Tracy Letts' August: Osage county Berliner Ensemble | Berlin directed by Oliver Reese Drugs, alcohol, and deceit. These are the Weston Family’s tools of choice to numb against the many painful truths that surround them. The sudden disappearance of the family patriarch, Beverly Weston, forces an unavoidable gathering and the cross-generational conflict that ensues. The scattered family can hardly come together before jealousy, greed, dishonesty and simple pigheadedness b
Narcissus in the Garden of Eden
✮✮ Ersan Mondtag & Olga Bach's The Extermination Theatertreffen | Berlin directed by Ersan Mondtag Blackout. Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem can be heard slowly building to its climax as the theater fills with fog. At the pinnacle of suspense, the classical music subsides and is replaced by the stillness of a summer night; crickets, an occasional crow cawing in the distance, and above all an almost unbearable calm. As the four-man ensemble comes into view their ennui and utter
From Moscow to Basel
✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Simon Stone's Three Sisters Theatertreffen | Berlin directed by Simon Stone Simon Stone’s modernisation of Anton Checkov’s Three Sisters opens Germany’s 53rd annual Theatertreffen as a guest production by Theater Basel at the Berliner Festspiele. Three Sisters has been selected as one of the “ten most notable productions” of the year in the German-language region selected by the jury from 344 productions in 63 cities. The festival is introduced by the director of the
The Last Days of Caterpillar
✮✮✮ 1/2 Falk Richter's Verräter - Die letzten Tage Maxim Gorki Theater | Berlin directed by Falk Richter Falk Richter’s Verräter - Die letzten Tage (Traitors - The Last Days) is an attempt to grasp and examine the recent and radical turns in today’s political climate. The title alone elicits the questions that provide a framework for understanding the entire production. If there are traitors in the world around us, who are they and whom have they betrayed? If these are indeed
The Theatre of Discomfort
✮ 1/2 Angélica Liddell's Dead Dog at Dry Cleaners: the Strong Schaubühne | Berlin directed by Angélica Liddell Angélica Liddell’s Dead Dog at Dry Cleaners: the Strong opens this year’s Festival International Neue Dramatik (FIND) at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin. The festival is composed of thirteen plays and continues until the ninth of April. For the second time Liddell presents a piece at the Schaubühne during FIND. The performance is the German Language premiè
The Pursuit of Happiness
✮✮✮✮ Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman Deutsches Theater | Berlin directed by Bastian Kraft Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman receives new life on the stage of Max Reinhardt’s former Theater in Berlin, the Deutsches Theater. Premiered in 1949, this piece is possibly Miller’s most well known work and one for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Despite being translated into another language (a version by Volker Schlöndorff and Florian Hopf) this quintessentially Americ
