That’s all I could think during Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder at the Kammerspiele last night. It dragged on and on for what felt like much longer than two hours. And there was no intermission, so there was no chance of escape. The Munich Kammerspiele has a long history with this show—they actually staged the second-ever production in Germany, with Brecht himself directing. One presumes he made it a lot more interesting than this new production’s director, Thomas Schmauser.
Ursula Werner, Lena Lauzemis, Peter Brombacher, Christian Löber, Stefan Merki, and Leonard Klenner. Photo: Julian Baumann
The show was often physically painful. I realize that Brecht plays are supposed to provoke discomfort, but I always thought that was intellectual discomfort. Here, long songs sung off-key and whole scenes that were shouted at the top of the actors’ lungs (in the small black box venue) forced me to cover my ears. Lena Lauzemis’s shrill, nasal voice as Yvette hurt, too. Taking things to extremes can be effective, but not when those extremes are so annoying that they distract from the words and story. Continue reading Are Mother Courage’s children dead yet?→
Although I am getting better and better at understanding quickly spoken German, I still always miss words at the theater. So when I saw that the Kammerspiele was performing Schande (Disgrace) with English supertitles. I was excited by the prospect of a show that would be easy to follow. I shouldn’t have been, for two reasons: (1) it’s an awful play, and (2) the supertitle operator seemed to be drunk or sleeping for large sections of it.
I think my second complaint is self-explanatory, so let’s dicuss the first. I haven’t read J.M. Coetzee’s novel on which the play is based, so I don’t know if it’s any good. But I can tell you definitively that it doesn’t work as a play. (German reviewers seem to disagree with me on this one, but they’re free to be wrong.) There is no dramatic arc. Exciting things occasionally happen (far too rarely), but there’s no clear rhythym to them and no clear climax. The adaptor Josse de Pauw’s choice to make the scenes unchronological just exacerbates the problem: where does the story begin and end? Actually, it keeps feeling like the play should end, but it drags on and on and on. Perhaps this sense of endless tedium is partially due to the ill-advised decision to stage a two-hour show without an intermission.
Stephan Bissmeier (David Lurie), Barbara Dussler (Melanie/Desiree Isaacs). Photo: Julian Röder
The events portrayed ought to be exciting, though they somehow are not. The play opens with a sex scandal (Professor Lurie is dismissed in disgrace for seducing and raping a vulnerable student) and includes a violent attack on the professor and his daughter. It deals with race relations and political change in South Africa. (It’s also pretty racist—the agents of violence and chaos are invariably black, and there’s a hint that Laurie’s daughter’s black business partner arranged for her to be raped as part of a scheme to take control of the business—but perhaps that’s because most events are presented through the eyes of a suspicious, middle-class, white man during a period of extreme racial turmoil. It’s disturbing nonetheless.) Continue reading A disgraceful Disgrace→
If we don’t count Woyzeck at the Kammerspiele and at the Volkstheater (because one was only loosely based on the original script), Maria Stuart marks my first time seeing two different productions of the same play in German. In fact, Schiller’s Maria Stuart was one of the first plays I ever saw in German, just over a year ago in Vienna. That production—starkly minimalistic, sort of modern, and dramatically lit—was fabulous. So perhaps it was inevitable that I would be disappointed the second time around.
It’s not that Andreas Kriegenburg’s new production is bad. It’s my favorite show I’ve seen at the Kammerspiele so far. (I haven’t been lucky there, on the whole.) The abstract set serves as both a prison and a royal court, depending on the lighting. That lighting is noticeably terrible in the first scene (yes, it’s a dark prison, but I still want to be able to see the actors’ faces!), but improves thereafter. The historical costumes are gorgeous, with Elisabeth in a stunning yellow gown and red wig that contrast with Maria’s bald head and dirty shift. (She gets her own pretty red gown and blond wig after intermission, though.) The men are hard to tell apart in their Puritanical blacks—with the hilarious exception of the French ambassador, who sports a tight-fitting, lime-green, velvet suit.
Annette Paulmann (Elisabeth), Walter Hess (Paulet), Edmund Telgenkämper (Davison), Wolfgang Pregler (Shrewsbury), Vincent zur Linden (Count Aubespine, the French ambassador), Oliver Mallison (Leicester), Jochen Noch (Burleigh). Photo: Judith Buss
The Kammerspiele’s strange mash-up of Buchner’s play Woyzeck with Berg’s opera Wozzeck (an adaptation of Buchner’s play) begins at the end. Or rather, it begins with a narration of the end. We never see the conclusion of the play, but we are reminded of it every moment by the set—a pool of water that spans nearly the entire stage. Characters splash through their scenes, and in fact these splashes are perhaps the set’s biggest contribution. While it’s fun to see actors flop around in the pool, the combination of the constantly sloshing water and Berg’s unsettling tone rows sets nerves on edge. (In this play, that’s a good thing.)
The last thing a three-hour play needs is ponderous orchestral interludes, however beautifully composed they may be. Of course, I doubt Danton’s Death would be a three-hour play at all if it were directed and played with any sense of pacing. But the Kammerspiele’s production is deadly dull. Between this and my previous visit, I’m starting to think they’re a theatre to avoid.
Kristof Van Boven (Camille Desmoulins), Çiğdem Teke (Citizen), Hans Kremer (Herman), Annette Paulmann (St. Just), and Pierre Bokma (Georg Danton). Photo: Julian Röder
My German Season 