Theater that acts as if it were “Netflix”: “Faith, Money, War and Love” by Robert Lepage
Photo: Gianmarco Bresadola
The title of this almost five-hour production – “Faith, Money, War and Love” – which the Canadian star director Robert Lepage set up at Lehniner Platz during his first collaboration with the Berliner Schaubühne ensemble, lets the audience know: This is what it’s all about everything. If you wanted to say it more precisely, you would have to say: about the latest German history and about cross-generational trauma.
To do this, Lepage travels through the decades, from 1945 to 2022, and divides the production into four storylines, all of which have their points of contact with one another. There we have a newborn abandoned after the end of the war, the child of a black GI, who grows up in a nunnery, goes to France, has a successful career as a model and even gives her twin children into the care of others.
In the following story we observe a woman burdened by her Nazi family’s money, earned at the expense of forced laborers. Her relationship with her husband breaks down. Only by giving in to her gambling addiction can she free herself from dirty money.
Soon we see a traumatized soldier, worn down by two tours in Afghanistan. Now he lies on a psychologist’s treatment couch and struggles with the shocks of the war – and his broken family.
Finally, we accompany a gay couple who want to fulfill their desire to have children through an agency that puts them in touch with Ukrainian surrogate mothers. This highly problematic process – which blatantly raises the question of physical exploitation – is presented here very clearly, not without humor. Then the Ukraine war breaks out. The child is far away and the path to the conflict zone separates the fathers from family happiness.
Lepage presents all of this in an incredibly elaborate way. From the auditorium you follow the psychological play and don’t think you’re in the theater, but believe you’re watching a “Netflix” series in front of the screen. The action on stage flies by – thanks to the great stage magic, the supporting music, all the technical equipment and numerous costume changes. Despite the mastery of the director and players, the evening suffers considerably from the fact that, in addition to the moving, the banal is also repeatedly extended on stage.
The audience is also not spared a clichéd story of incest between mother and son. All sorts of inconsistencies have become embedded in the construction of history. You don’t have to, or certainly can’t, believe everything you’re told here: it’s a modern fairy tale.
The ending of the fairy tale leaves you somewhat irritated. One of the newborn’s fathers, who fled the Yugoslav civil war as a child and served in the Afghanistan mission as an adult, travels to Kiev with his former therapist, ex-wife of his partner and egg donor for the successful surrogacy, to receive the desired child . But then he lets the woman, who has had a long journey of emancipation behind her and now feels ready to become a mother herself, go alone with the baby and stays behind in Ukraine. A little less heroic pathos – at least in this one place – wouldn’t actually be too much to ask.
Next performances: October 10th, 11th and 12th
www.schaubuehne.de
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