The last Berlin premiere of the season, René Pollesch’s alien-culture-clash-sex-comedy “Love, simply extraterrestrial”, is both a wonderful gift for a good mood and an impertinence. The staging at the Deutsches Theater is a pleasure, because Pollesch trusts as casually as in his best times that his great actors, music from the “Ramones”, a few B-movie quotes, the old Pollesch poetry and the even older ones Tabloid tricks are enough to ignite a stage party for an hour and a half.
She simply blows away all the misery beyond the stage: whoosh! Just as Sophie Rois, as an alien, has the honor of dropping in on this desolate little planet and stumbling into the happiest of romantic entanglements, you immediately want to emigrate with her to the solar system of your choice: Beam me up, Sophie! Anyone who is not happy, elated and ready to fall in love immediately after this performance or at least invite pleasant strangers over coffee and cake (a very direct description of sex in Pollesch’s play) has no heart, no brain, no eyes and no libido.
The question of whether anyone still needs theater in the face of war, pandemic, climate change, capitalism and the other plagues of depression is answered in the most beautiful way this evening: And how! Absolutely! If you know someone who has good reason to be fed up with earthly misery (or who you would like to share coffee and cake with on occasion), buy him or her a ticket to this theatrical performance right away – the finest legally available happiness drug on the planet. And definitely the most enjoyable Berlin production of this strange season. At least.
Doesn’t Pollesch have anything better to do than compete with his theatre?
The production is a real annoyance, however, because it takes place at the Deutsches Theater. Nothing against this good playhouse, but Pollesch’s crime scene premiere is less than ten minutes away from the Volksbühne, the theater that he is said to have been running since this season. In view of the thoroughly unpleasant results of his first Volksbühne season, the question arises: does the good man have nothing better to do than to compete with his theater in the same city? Is he still interested in the Volksbühne – or is it just the place that pays him a director’s salary every month?
In the first year of his directorship, Pollesch apparently had enough time to direct not only at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, but also at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. Shortly before the start of this season, during the well-paid preparatory period of his directorship, he brought out another production at the Deutsches Theater neighbours. That’s about like getting a new one mirrorEditor-in-Chief three weeks before the first editors’ conference a major investigative story in the time publish, and in the first mirror-Year by the way with great stories in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the FAZ cheating while his employer’s requirements plummet. Or as if the Federal Chancellor were to start with jobs for the shortly before and after the handover Deutsche Bank (or for the cum-ex pros from Hamburg Warburg bank) supplement his modest salary. In any other area, the head of a not entirely unimportant institution would immediately walk away from the window if disinterest in the task entrusted to him was so offensively demonstrated. In Berlin, at a theater subsidized with 23 million euros a year, that’s possible.
If you ask the Berlin cultural administration, after all the supervisory authority and sponsor of the Volksbühne, whether that might not be a problem, the otherwise always friendly press spokesman becomes conspicuously tight-lipped and formal: “According to the directorship contract, René Pollesch is entitled to guest directorships. About the specific contents of his contract unfortunately no information can be given. René Pollesch’s connection to DT goes back a long way.” That’s why, according to the spokesman for Senator for Culture Lederer, Pollesch wanted to keep old director’s appointments. That’s ridiculous. Management contracts can be terminated. Ulrich Khuon, the director of the Deutsches Theater, always seems extremely fair and accommodating towards his employees. A conversation would probably have been enough to forget the director’s appointment in all friendship – especially in view of the premiere overkill after the lockdown. If Pollesch took his directorship seriously, he would have had to terminate his numerous guest contracts on the day the contract was signed, at least for this and the following season. If the Berlin cultural administration were doing their job, they would at least have asked whether these away games had to be. If one does not want to accuse Pollesch of greed and a cynical relationship to the Volksbühne, the only explanation left is a stale joke: perhaps the Volksbühne director wanted to work at a professionally run theater for a change.
The collective talk is nonsense. Its main function is to obscure responsibility
His delight in guest director fees is not good style. It becomes a massive annoyance given the disastrous condition of the Volksbühne. In some months, the house on the big stage had more closed days than performances. The utilization: modest. The show “Smak!” announced with great fanfare. Filipino self-promoter Khavn’s (“SuperMachoAntiKristo”) was just one of the season’s embarrassments. The borderline stupid plunge into the anal phase doesn’t skimp on Nazi vocabulary when those who think differently are hysterically insulted from the stage as “subhuman”. After a few performances, the complex and expensive show had to be canceled.
Even if there was little going on on stage, Pollesch gave full-bodied interviews about the supposedly collectively run theatre. The collective talk is nonsense. Similar to “Documenta”, its main function is to obscure responsibility. From a purely formal point of view, the artistic direction lies solely with Pollesch. However, it is interesting that the ominous management collective also includes the actors Martin Wuttke and Kathrin Angerer and the set designer Leo Neumann. Do they negotiate their contracts with themselves? Was Neumann, as an informal co-director, able to pass on the Volksbühne’s advertising budget to the graphics agency LSD, which he runs with his mother? Anywhere else it would be a scandal. In Berlin, that doesn’t bother anyone. When asked, the press spokesman for the cultural administration explained diplomatically: “We have the information about the graphics office. We will try to talk to get clarification.” Well then.
In view of the thin schedule and the confusing program, the trade journal “Theater heute” attests the tottering Volksbühne that “Pollesch’s international program beyond his own productions could just as well have taken place with his hated predecessor Chris Dercon.” In view of Dercon’s crashing failure at the Volksbühne, this is a crisis diagnosis that is as ironic as it is devastating. No wonder that the name Matthias Lilienthal has been mentioned more often in the Berlin rumor mill lately – be it as a possible chief dramaturg, be it as co-artistic director. The ex-Volksbühnen chief dramaturge, ex-Dercon buddy and ex-Kammerspiel director currently doesn’t have much to do. And in contrast to the apparently hopelessly overwhelmed dramaturgy of the house and the ominous management collective, he is at least a professional. The bets are on as to whether Pollesch will give up in a year or two, whether a gracious Senator for Culture will propose an early end to his contract or whether the misery at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz will drag on for a long time. Either way, liberation from the director’s role would be the best thing that could happen to director Pollesch.