STUTTGART, Germany — When it comes to theater in Germany, only one claim can be made with any certainty: If you’re expecting Masterpiece Theater, go elsewhere.
Directors here have a not-undeserved reputation for making mincemeat of the likes of Chekhov, Ibsen and Shakespeare.
The disasters and competing ideologies of the 20th century have left a heavy mark on Germany, a country with a deep and flourishing dramatic tradition, and the classics — the representative works of a culture that descended sharply into barbarism — are often presented in a jarringly original light, reinterpreted or even dissected.
Friedrich Schiller’s “Die Räuber” (“The Robbers”) from 1781 is among the most studied and performed of all German plays.
In Ulrich Rasche’s shattering production at the Residenz Theater in Munich, the stage is dominated by enormous treadmills that roll continuously like the tracks of a tank, lifting the actors to the sky or tilting them toward the abyss.
In this way, Rasche, who also designed the sets, places this key work of the Sturm und Drang movement, with its exploration of human freedom and the struggle between good and evil, in a dark and strikingly abstract setting.
Schiller’s five-act melodrama dramatizes many of the main concerns of the Enlightenment in a tale of sibling rivalry. Franz, the unloved son of the aging Count von Moor, will stop at nothing — not even patricide — to steal the birthright of his older brother, Karl. Through both cunning and rationalism, Franz succeeds in blackening his brother’s name. Karl, disgraced and disowned, becomes the leader of a band of robbers who fight the corruption of the feudal system. The band of violent anarchists sees theft, arson and even murder as justified in their struggle for freedom.
With Rasche’s single, machine-dominated set, the setting is evoked purely through Schiller’s dialogue, crisply declaimed by actors walking or jogging — often secured with harnesses — on the massive rolling bands. Over the three-hour running time, it looks like quite a workout.
The star is Katja Bürkle as the villainous Franz Moor. New to the Residenz Theater ensemble, she turns out a bloodcurdling, no-holds-barred performance of operatic intensity. And while casting an actress in this role does, to an extent, force the audience to reflect on the role of women in the patriarchy — an issue that Schiller’s text doesn’t explore — I feel certain that Bürkle was chosen for her acting abilities and not because the director felt his production needed a feminist twist. Franz is a lengthy and murderously complex role, and having Bürkle front and center most of the time was an effective counterpoint to the male-dominated production.
As a director, Rasche strives for dramatic mood and effect through music and ritualistic methods. In “Die Räuber,” the American composer Ari Benjamin Meyer’s pulsating score for violin, viola, electric bass and drums, performed live from the sides of the stage, creates a dronelike, hypnotic effect. The robber band itself becomes something of a Greek chorus, reciting both dialogue from the play and texts by the Invisible Committee, an anonymous radical leftist French author (or collective), as two baritones and a tenor chant a grim, martial hymn.
Along with his better-known contemporary Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Schiller adored and venerated Shakespeare, whose plays had been performed in German since the early 17th century — a time when no other translations existed. Shakespeare remains a superstar of Germany’s vast and generously funded theater scene. While classic translations, including several by Schiller himself, are still used, it is increasingly common to present modern-language translations. No doubt, this method entails a trade-off: What is lost in poetic beauty and precision is gained in emotional, dramatic and even psychological immediacy.
Claus Peymann’s production of “König Lear” at the Schauspiel Stuttgart uses a new performing version by Jutta Ferbers, supplemented by Peter Handke’s modern translations of the fool’s songs. As Shakespeare’s darkest, most nihilistic work, “Lear” benefits from such contemporary idiomatic directness. Without needing to work through Shakespeare’s ornate language, one is especially struck by the work’s pervasive cruelty and pessimism.
Peymann is the former artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble, and the starkly focused style he honed at Bertolt Brecht’s old theater during his long tenure there is evident in this sparse production, where the action is confined to an empty circle. Throughout, the stage remains bare save for Lear’s golden crown dangling from a fishing-hook center stage: an image that becomes a powerful symbol for the work as a whole. There are neon lights, gusts of rain and music, but the success of the production rests largely on the actors’ shoulders.
Martin Schwab, a longtime member of Vienna’s Burgtheater, made for a flustered and impetuous Lear. With nothing mannered about his brash performance, he managed Lear’s stubbornness, madness and grief convincingly, without grand theatrical flourishes. The 80-year-old actor, clad in white linen, undoubtedly possessed gravitas, but it was consistently undercut by this production’s ability to expose the play’s unadorned, naked brutality.
Peymann’s most audacious idea was casting one actress as both Cordelia and the Fool, an inspiration tied to a scholarly debate that Shakespeare may have written both roles for the same actor. Regardless of the original intent, it was an ingenious and often heartbreaking move, thanks to Lea Ruckpaul’s brilliantly pliable performance. As Lear’s silent, modest daughter, one understood the emotional pain that her repressed affection cost her. As the jester who accompanies the mad king on his wanderings, she caterwauled and played a squeezebox while childishly giving vent to the anguish that Cordelia only hints at.
Nearly four years into Armin Petras’ tenure as artistic director, the Schauspiel Stuttgart has become one of the most exciting dramatic stages in Germany. If “Lear” has been the theater’s biggest success of the season thus far, then Kay Voges’ “Das 1. Evangelium,” freely adapted from the New Testament, is far and away the most controversial.
Theater scholars and practitioners may treat works by Schiller and Shakespeare as sacred texts. In terms of sanctity, however, their plays have nothing on the Bible. Voges, who leads the Schauspiel Dortmund, has cooked up an insane multimedia montage that turns “The Greatest Story Ever Told” into a riotously colorful, loud and exactingly choreographed romp through the New Testament.
Or is it?
It’s easy to identify the figures standing in for Jesus and Mary, but the metatheatrical frame, with a filmmaker struggling to make a Jesus movie, is both ludicrous and banal. In addition to the biblical sources, the script contains quotes from Joseph Beuys, Allen Ginsberg, Jean-Luc Godard, Susan Sontag and R.E.M. It would all be megapretentious if it weren’t so flat-out idiotic.
Monty Python offered a sharper satire with “Life of Brian,” and Pier Paolo Pasolini was far more radical — and genuine — with “The Gospel According to St. Matthew.” With its mixture of kitsch, excess and slick production values, “Das 1. Evangelium” illustrates the pitfalls of Germany’s “Regietheater” (“director’s theater”), a staging philosophy where a director wields virtually unlimited power.
But Rasche, Peymann and countless others prove that, when exercised correctly, that power can achieve brilliant and provocative effects, keeping the classics fresh, exciting and vital.
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Additional Information:
'Die Räuber (The Robbers).'Directed by Ulrich Rasche. Residenz Theater Munich, through May 21.
'King Lear.' Directed by Claus Peymann. Schauspielhaus Stuttgart, through May 29.
'Das 1. Evangelium.' Directed by Kay Voges. Schauspielhaus Stuttgart, through June 10.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Entertainment: In Munich and Stuttgart, directors give the classics a twist
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