This is a wonderfully whimsical bookshop where you would love to become a regular customer yourself: Here you can not only browse to your heart’s content, no, here you can immerse yourself so deeply in books that they come to life: in the literal sense, in the gop show “Bookshop” directed by Sabine Rieck.
Several gentlemen in gray suits are circling Michael Ende’s “Momo” on skateboards. A large wall clock with huge hands is ticking. These turn out to be two big clubs – which the Canadian juggler Bekka Rose unceremoniously dismantles. More clubs are added, and the artist is already demonstrating why she was named “Juggler of the Year” in Canada. In between, a stooped woman with a cane tiptoes across the stage – the little witch or transience itself?
It’s fun to guess which literary figures are artistically “dance to”. Some are named, while others remain rather vague: Joel Baker from the USA, for example, who has made himself comfortable in an armchair with his book, finds that his floor lamp develops a strange life of its own. Until the handstand artist puts the umbrella on his head to wander across the stage as a lamp. Could he be the crazy lamplighter from The Little Prince? It doesn’t matter – because here, as in the other book scenes, the focus is on the artistic performance, and it’s furious.
There is a lot going on in this bookshop, whose owner Ms. Sonntag, embodied by the French variety legend Amélie Demay, can even play the guitar upside down. Otherwise, the lively artist stands firmly on her feet and behind the cash register, directing the fortunes of her business together with her partner Michélé Chen – who mimics a weird magician’s article dealer.
Joel Baker’s floor lamp develops a life of its own while reading.
(Photo: Gop Munich)
During a stormy sea voyage, Moby Dick and a little mermaid swim by and a Robinson Crusoe is washed overboard. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian acrobats Alex and Vlad have their hands full as couriers – and twirl each other through the air on the soles of their feet. The Ukrainian-Russian-Polish three-man band fits the handmade retro charm of this store TriOle fabulous with accordion, percussion and double bass. In a group scene based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” they even get vocal reinforcement from the artists. Together they accompany a love pas de deux that Bénédicte Petit and Simon Joubert show on the Chinese pole.
However, one should not immerse oneself too much in a book – a fate that probably befell a reader who is now sitting on the couch as a skeleton. But he too is transformed – in a scarily beautiful number, the Belgian Helena Jans takes him to a melancholic dance of death on the trapeze.
Bookshop, until April 30th, gop-Varieté, Maximilianstraße 47