The very great actress Lina Beckmann, member of the ensemble at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, is currently receiving one award after another. And with what? Rightly. For her exorbitant performance as Richard in “Richard the Kid & the King” based on William Shakespeare, released at the Salzburg Festival, the 40-year-old was recently honored in Vienna with the Nestroy Prize in the “Best Actress” category. In the Hamburger Schauspielhaus she regularly receives standing ovations for her play, and the ARD cultural program “TTT – Titel Thesen Temperamente” she hailed in a post as an “all-rounder”. Now the renowned Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring is added. The award, endowed with 10,000 euros, has been presented annually since 1986 by the city of Bensheim together with the German Academy of Performing Arts awarded for outstanding acting.
The jury praised Lina Beckmann as a “great theater personality of our time” and particularly emphasized the “anarchic energy” of her Richard: “In a breathtaking four hours she developed the insane psychogram of a character who is able to transcend all moral boundaries. Lina Beckmann does this by exhausting herself physically and emotionally with an insane ruthlessness and a unique intensity … “All right and well priced. However, the fact that in addition to the director Jossi Wieler and the actor André Jung as the third member of the group, the director Karin Henkel also voted in the jury has a taste. Because Karin Henkel directed “Richard the Kid & the King”. What is a no-go in any other area should also apply to theater awards: that you don’t think about your own things. And then juries will be composed differently.
When asked by the SZ, the chairman of the jury, Jossi Wieler, said they were aware of this problem. But: “Quality beats everything.” Lina Beckmann’s performance is “so outstanding and so unprecedented” that he and André Jung were “completely convinced of it”. Karin Henkel “practically went on strike” in the jury vote.
Lina Beckmann, who tested positive for Covid-19 despite being vaccinated, is currently in quarantine. From this she was switched on live by video at the premiere of the revue “33 Variations on Haydn’s Skull” by Péter Esterházy in the Hamburg Schauspielhaus. She can be seen again as Richard on December 8th and 28th as well as on January 13th and 31st.
The Kurt Hübner Director’s Prize, which is also awarded in Bensheim as part of the Gertrud Eysoldt Ring, this year goes to Leonie Böhm for her production “Medea” at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. Both prizes are to be awarded in spring 2022.