The fact that the Berlin ensemble is reanimating Jean-Paul Sartre’s political-morality tear-jerker “Dirty Hands” or at least attempting to do so must be understood as an act of archeology: excavation work on the toxic waste dump of the great ideologies of the last century. Since its premiere in 1948, the garrulous piece with its overly simplistic tension between adherence to communist principles and pragmatism has not aged well. The fact that Sartre’s professional revolutionaries fervently refer to the mass murderers in Lenin’s entourage passes for idealism in the context of the play, while realpolitik compromises are of course suspected of committing treason against the great cause: Be embraced, Bolsheviks.
Berliner Ensemble: Mateja Koležnik stages Sartre’s “The Dirty Hands” with cliché culture
