At the end, a desperate person stands on the empty stage and twists his face into a pained grimace. This silent scream looks like it will never stop. Before that, this person, a war veteran named Beckmann, was trying to rid himself of his guilt after all the killing. Somehow he wanted to get back to a good life, or at least a bearable one. But this life no longer exists. Michael Thalheimer has on Berlin Ensemble staged the most famous anti-war play of German post-war theatre, Wolfgang Borchert’s “Outside the Door”.
as Thalheimer planned his productions for this season at some point last year, at most a few suspicious military men in the West suspected that war could come back to Central Europe. Borchert’s play, which premiered 75 years ago, two years after the end of the Second World War, is now terribly contemporary. At the premiere there will be a collection at the exit for Ukraine. Flowers and handwritten prayers for peace lie in front of the Ukrainian embassy a few hundred meters from the Berliner Ensemble.
René Pollesch’s “Are you okay?” is a lament for a male diva, a solo with and by and for Fabian Hinrichs.
(Photo: Thomas Aurin/Volksbühne Berlin)
A few streets further on Berlin VolksbühneHas Rene Pollesch staged his new play. In interviews, the Volksbühnen director likes to explain how little he thinks of a theater that stages events that follow the current affairs of the “Tagesschau”. But even Pollesch’s theater cannot escape the multiple crises of climate change, pandemic and war. In his new play, the director succinctly sums up the situation by listing the desolation: “1.5 meters. 1.5 degrees. 1.5 nuclear cases. 2 x 1.5 nuclear cases.” So the question of the piece’s title actually takes care of itself: “Are you okay?” How are you supposed to be doing right now?
From time to time the theater succeeds in capturing what is happening and how many people are feeling
The two Berlin productions couldn’t be more different in terms of their aesthetics and the world view of their directors. Archaic relationships of violence prevail in Thalheimer’s tragedy theatre. It trusts the promises of civilisation, peace and enlightenment only to a very limited extent. On the other hand, for Pollesch, theater cannot be enlightened, funny and modern enough. What connects the premieres of the two directing antipodes is the unprotected honesty with which they show the helplessness, sadness and despair in the face of war. It is perhaps no coincidence that on both evenings the protagonists are often very alone and lost, in the past one would have said: lost to God, on the huge, empty stages. One is very grateful for this gesture of helplessness when watching, not only because the theater pleasantly refrains from instructing the audience. From time to time the theater manages better than any explanations to capture what is happening and how many people are feeling.
René Pollesch’s piece is a lament for a male diva, a solo with and by and for Fabian Hinrichs. This amazing actor manages the feat of throwing himself into the suffering of himself and the world without a handbrake, while at the same time beaming in the best of moods. He bases it mockingly with “I’m playing something for you” irony and thus ensures the necessary hygiene distance to avoid splashing in the emotional bath of sensitivities. In view of the world crises, there are enough reasons to complain, and when in doubt, only gallows humor can help: “What is to come now, an alien invasion or God personally?” The lament of this lonely man is accompanied and framed on the empty stage by two choirs, one African and one Bulgarian, with the breakdance virtuosos of the Flying Steps for the momentum you need. It’s absolutely heartwarming, there’s nothing like a bunch of very different people coming together. Talking about humanity is sometimes not a phrase, but a moment of truth on a theater stage. This is true even if the two great choirs can only present their singing skills in full splendor as an encore and otherwise are more of an accessory to the group arrangements.
Putin, for Pollesch a clear case of “botoxic masculinity
On this evening, Pollesch skillfully keeps the balance between irony and pain. He shows what the misery of the world causes in a comparatively comfortable region, for example in the emotional life of Pollesch and his viewers. His text remains personal without falling into the traps of narcissism, pumping up the theater to become the authority to explain the world or using real horror as a parasitic means of exploiting the emotions of the theatre. The head of the Volksbühne sticks to his means and themes and speaks in sophisticated breaks above all about himself and his peers and his own question marks, confusion and sighs of longing. That is why the romantic ego, which spreads its complaint on stage, suffers not only from the three world crises, but at least as much from its very private misery: it has been abandoned by a loved one and now hopes that the loved one but please come back It all goes on! Private life and love and its end and longing when you sit alone in your apartment in lockdown and stare at the TV: “We will be ghosts. 30,000 hours of Netflix! 30,000 hours of news! And then that, on Top.”
What is added “on top” to all the misery is the war, which falls into the monologue even for Pollesch’s stage self, manically circling around himself and love, “a war that tells me that I can’t just do it here talk about both of us.” Which of course he does anyway. As a reminder of the real terror, Putin’s mask-like bulldog face occasionally flashes on the horizon (stage: Katrin Brack), for Pollesch a clear case of “botoxic masculinity.” A fictitious rescue suggests a rocket in the shape of a shiny silver dildo, in which the choirs disappear to look for a better life on another planet: Last Exit Escapism. Only Fabian Hinrichs stays behind and mourns the loss of love.
Borchert’s war returnee Beckmann also seeks salvation in love with Thalheimer at the Berliner Ensemble, in this case with a blonde Loreley (Philine Schmölzer). First of all, of course, that’s in vain and secondly, it’s a rather adolescent rescue fantasy about a warrior whose wounded heart is comforted by a woman after a lost battle. That’s not the only thing that seems a bit strange today in Borchert’s unfiltered, youthful world-weariness and late-expressionistic oh-man-pathos. Thalheimer cleverly dispenses with tear duct effects and contemporary colouring, be it decorative swastikas or references to the current war. Instead, he sets up a vaudeville from hell under a sky of colorful lights (stage: Olaf Altmann). Kathrin Wehlisch, as Beckmann who returned from the war, gives the performance dignity, strength and truth when she is the only person wandering through this nightmare among all the ghost train zombies. And finally answered in the only possible way: with a silent scream.