Deutsches Theater Berlin: RAF Drama: Goodnight, History!

It was almost 20 years ago that Elfriede Jelinek, one of the most eloquent writers in contemporary theater, wrote her richly association-rich examination of the Red Army Faction. The Nobel Prize winner called her play “Ulrike Maria Stuart,” for which she used Schiller’s opus as a background, a “queen’s drama.” It is a dispute between the rulers that she tells us about. Ulrike Marie Meinhof becomes a Stuart of the 20th century; Gudrun Ensslin becomes the power-drunk after-queen Elisabeth I. They fight for dominance in the group. They are both incarcerated.

It may be surprising that the Deutsches Theater Berlin chose this one in view of countless Jelinek pieces. All the more gratifying when art and reality meet each other in pursuit. One day before the premiere, former RAF member Daniela Klette was arrested. The present breaks into the reality of rehearsals so quickly.

But – too early to rejoice: in Pınar Karabulat’s directorial appropriation of the material, everything is purely present anyway, colorful empty pop and text degraded to a hollow phrase, presented in the same half-ironic tone. The young director, who will take over the direction of the Schauspielhaus Zurich together with Rafael Sanchez from the season after next, seems to have little interest in history and its impact on today. She’d rather push a few ideas across the stage; All she owes us is a substantial idea about the history of the Federal Republic or at least about the drama of Jelinek.

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The text-rich piece was trimmed into a 65-minute tour de force. Set in a “Gothic backdrop,” as dramaturg Daniel Richter writes in the program booklet, the players rant on stage. Meinhof is as wrong here as Ensslin is. And anyway: In the end, every revolutionary zeal only becomes a terrorist act. All of this happens on stage – with ironic distance and a sense of our own superiority – as if it really doesn’t concern us at all. As a viewer, you would have liked to find out how it got to this point. This somewhat stubborn spectacle with a lot of banging effects delivers a lot, but no drama, that is: confrontation.

“We know nothing other than the bourgeois way of dealing with history,” it is said from the stage. And further: “And we know how that turned out.” However. This was, once again, clearly visible.

Next performances: March 8th, 12th and 29th

www.deutschestheater.de

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