Theater as a meaphor: Russian premieres at Hamburg’s Thalia – Kultur

At the hamburger Thalia Theater was “Russian” premiere weekend. Two plays, which tell of life in the Tsarist Empire and at the time of the upheaval of perestroika, happened to be on the program one after the other, and it was inevitable that everyone in the auditorium viewed the content against the background of Putin’s war of aggression. Does Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, set on a Russian estate and starring Kharkov, hint at the new tsar’s aggressive story? Or does the adaptation of Nino Haratischvili’s novel “The Lack of Light” about life in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi explain why Russia’s leaders repeatedly decide to attack their neighbors?

First of all, the coincidence is of course an occasion for demonstrations of solidarity. At the beginning of Hakan Savaş Mican’s Wanja production in the small Gaussstraße venue, Daniel Kahn, who accompanies the play as a musician, sings a Jewish song with the refrain: “Serving the Russian Emperor is not good, because he bathes in our blood”. And at the end of Jette Steckel’s almost five-hour production about the youth and adult years in the state of permanent crisis Georgia, the actors unfurl a banner “For peace and freedom”. In both cases, however, this desire, which moved everyone, for a gesture of support for the Ukrainian people, did not extend to changing the productions themselves.

In the case of Uncle Vanya, that would be a bit tormented too, because this play is about indolence and silent aggression. Anyone who shoots here does so out of raging desperation over an unbearable injury. Or are the motives for the two shots that Uncle Vanya fires at his selfish brother-in-law, Professor Serebryakov, perhaps similar to the emotional pain that prompts Putin to resort to insane violent solutions. Many commentators describe Putin’s long-standing narrative of a national insult, which, like all dictators, is more narcissistic, as a reflection of a lack of recognition by the West.

Although Hakan Savaş Mican’s production otherwise tries very hard to be a typical Chekhov evening of despair, where in a stormy summer mood people unhappily love and suffer without consequence, many behaviors can be found through the Putin lens that may help to interpret Russian violent politics. The great discrepancy between a masculine exaggerated self-image and a rather miserable existence that Serebryakov (Oliver Mallison) embodies in this play can be used as a metaphor for a country politically guided by exaggerated masculine national pride, while living conditions such as infrastructure are widespread are ruinous.

The concluding advice of the disillusioned niece Sonja (Meryem Öz) to the unhappy Wanja (Stefan Stern), “learn to endure life”, may also describe a mood in disillusioned Russia, where the betrayed people put up with their autocrat until he takes them leading to the brink of world war. And so in this fine picture of society that Chekhov drew 125 years ago, a reference can be sensed in almost every character that tells something about resignation and latent violence, through which constructive hopes turn into destructive solutions.

The story also carries the strong optimistic message that the struggle for self-determination can be successful

The doctor, conservationist and vegetarian Astrow (Felix Knopp), who talks about climate change and deforestation, drowns the frustration of the unwillingness to change and the greed of his time in vodka. And the professor’s blonde trophy wife (Anna Blomeier) sees through all masculine maneuvers and weaknesses, but still resigns to her fate. You don’t have to blatantly update all of this to recognize generally valid structures of egoism, self-deception and solutions to anger, which also have an effect in Putin’s politics.

In the theatrical version of Haratischvili’s new novel “The Lack of Light”, which was published at the same time as the production, the historical parallels are formulated much more clearly. The constant struggle with Russia for Georgian self-determination, which is told from the end of the Soviet empire to the Yeltsin era, intervenes directly in the biographies of the four protagonists. Friends since childhood, they experience their search for meaning and happiness in an environment of criminal violence, political upheavals with revolutionary character as well as wars and massacres, all of which are related to Moscow’s traditional strive for hegemony.

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Gorbachev’s dissolution of the Soviet state, which brought a new era of prosperity and democratic self-determination to East Western Europe, also resulted in enormous violence in the Caucasus. For example in the war of the Abkhazian separatists against the state of Georgia, which provides the background for many emotional conflicts between the four friends Qeto (Lisa Hagmeister), Dina (Maja Schöne), Nene (Rosa Thormeyer), Irine (Fritzi Haberlandt) and their families. Machismo, injured feelings of honor, nationalistic politics and corruption form the overpowering resistance against which the private and loving must be defended. And who repeatedly force existential decisions on women.

Between rotating wall elements with colorful pixel print, which are constantly being redesigned into new rooms in the constant flow of the revolving stage (stage by Florian Loesche), director Jette Steckel unfortunately capitulates a little in front of the abundance of material and tells the story in detail instead of as an example. Constant repetition of similar conflicts, which also never leave their milieu, produce far too many redundancies. The third adaptation of Haratischwili’s Georgia novels by Jette Steckel am Thalia after “The Eighth Life (Für Brilka)” and “The Cat and the General” is also very similar in terms of form and content.

And so it is actually Putin’s current war policy that directs the questioning interest when watching more to the historical context. The geopolitical arrogance of Russian elites, who absolutely want to be a great empire with vassal states, where the nationalist battle chants ultimately only serve self-enrichment and political vanity less, seems like a historical refrain that has to be repeated over and over again. Interrupted by short phases of strong hopes for change, the two decades of politics from a Georgian perspective, which are unfolded in this production, tell of a certain inevitability of an increase in power that ends in war.

In the light of these “Russian” stagings, Putin’s patient transformation of the state from a vulnerable democracy into a hurtful dictatorship seems like a strategic program by rulers in Moscow, regardless of their political persuasion. But the story of the four women, like the country of Georgia, also carries a strongly optimistic message that the struggle for self-determination can be successful. Three out of four school friends arrive in a life that only knows small instead of big worries. For example, the lack of light in a backyard studio.