If you read Knut Hamsun’s “Kareno Trilogy”, written between 1895 and 1898, in the printed version, it seems very surprising that the author received the Nobel Prize for Literature more than 20 years later. For a completely different book, of course, “Blessing of the Earth”, which, however, plays a smaller role in the Norwegian writer’s posthumous fame than “Hunger”, Hamsun’s early foray into consciousness-streaming literary modernity. A little of this is found in the Kareno plays, though their defining feature is an almost total theatrical futility. But that doesn’t stop the director Stephan Kimmig from putting them together at the Munich Residenztheater under the title “Spiel des Lebens” to form an incredibly dense evening in which a fantastic ensemble shines and at the end the audience is asked to think for themselves in a wonderfully floating way.
Kareno’s text demonizes democracy and liberalism and celebrates despotism
In part one, “At the gates of the empire”, the philosopher Ivar Kareno struggles with his work, the world and all people. On page 95 of the play you can find out exactly what it is about: a Nietzschean brew of thoughts that demonizes every form of democracy and liberalism and celebrates despotism. Nobody wants to print that, and Kareno runs away from his wife Elina. Ten years later, Kareno builds a glass tower of knowledge by the sea in “Spiel des Lebens” – the piece gives Kimmig’s production the title – the entrepreneur Otermann finds marble under the moor, becomes rich and mad about it, a typhus epidemic is spreading The ship sinks, Otermann’s stubborn daughter Teresita haunts her as an erotic promise and in the end everything comes crashing down. Finally, in “Afterglow”, again ten years later, the bourgeois camp ensnares Kareno, who, after much deliberation, renounces his right-wing theories and almost falls victim to an assassination attempt by his former like-minded people.
Hamsun later campaigned massively for National Socialism, met Hitler, and after the war, now very old, was sentenced to a high fine in Norway. But to understand Kareno as an early representative for Hamsun’s later attitude would not go far enough. On the contrary, and Kimmig works this out very nicely, Hamsun makes fun of both sides, the crazy right and the bourgeois camp, for whom an election victory is more important than an attitude.
Katja Hass’s stage is a clever, multifunctional structure, the first third is performed on the front stage. Max Mayer and Lisa Stiegler play Marital War in the Kareno house with precision, Robert Dölle comes by as a cunning journalist, Lukas Rüppel together with Hanns Scheibe as a wandering couple, ideological enemies. When the room opens, everyone bangs through wonderfully. Mayer becomes a flickering event, stalking through the seaweed like a flamingo, doesn’t stay still for a second, Liliane Amuat embodies the shimmering promise of Teresita in the most beautiful way, Oliver Stokowski is a hilarious rich miser. In the end, Kareno’s best friend is a stuffed reindeer, everything human seems like a lie to him, and Kimmig delivers, as he did last time Judith Herzberg trilogy at the Residenztheateronce again a superior, sovereign performance of the best drama theatre.