If an evening at the theater starts with a trigger warning, you can expect a lot – for example an increased dose of rattling self-mockery. At the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, the warning is particularly strong: “There could be scenes of sexualised violence!” Fortunately, they don’t happen, but even so, Christian Weise’s exhilarated production of “Queen Lear” is a strenuous event in its self-infatuation. In the classic adaptation of the author’s pseudonym Soeren Voima (behind which are the director and Schaubühne dramaturge Christian Tschirner), the gender swap from King to Queen Lear is one of the more harmless interventions. Shakespeare’s characters are put into a big mixer with lots of retro pop, queer cabaret, backstage jokes, banging, Berlin chav snout and “Star Wars”. This is stirred vigorously once, and the trash cocktail is ready, Shakespeare as an acted comic. But because Shakespeare is known to be indestructible, at least the rough plot of his tragedy survives this nonsense. In their We-dare-us-something-power-boom, the direction of the gross motor skills is touchingly anachronistic. Shortly after the turn of the millennium, something like that was almost hip in the somewhat clumsier regions of pop theater for a while, unfortunately today it seems a bit stale.
Children’s birthday party in the decrepit theater
A lot of things in this production are completely meaningless and only moderately funny in the late puberty overexcitement – for example the random idea of having the whole thing play out in space. The “Star Wars” jokes including lightsabers have something of children’s birthday jokes, but sometimes it also seems as if the theater is so decrepit that it can no longer make ends meet without artificial respiration of pop culture. The first third of the three-hour event, which is about two hours too long, is presented as a live film with painted spaceship decorations (stage and animation: Julia Oschatz), which at least provides for nice image effects in the style of the Augsburger Puppenkiste. It’s just stupid that every humble idea is mercilessly rolled out and trampled on until it has reliably lost every last bit of charm and wit.
The fact that the evening is fun at times, despite the poor content, is due to the actors, who throw themselves into the battle at full speed. In the first part, the great Corinna Harfouch as Queen Lear is the ice-cold diva in a state of advanced misanthropy and disorientation. In the second half, betrayed by her unfaithful sons and heirs in the royal power, she bravely shouts “I am an allegory” and breathtakingly drives her character into complete solitude, a lost, defenseless being on an empty revolving stage. The other power center of the evening is once again Svenja Liesau as the daughter of Countess Gloster (tough: Catherine Stoyan). As in her Hamlet-Punk performance at the same theatre, Liesau is an actress with the explosive power of an unlocked hand grenade. As a noble daughter on the run, she turns into a Berlin chav bride of the harsher kind with exhausting buddy charm and an inexhaustible arsenal of harsh sayings: “In my head, nobody is at home anymore, they all moved away unknown.”