German Theater Berlin – There is no rescue

What a family. Simply broken. There is the mother, Mary, of whom everyone is afraid that she turns back to drugs after the last withdrawal, as before. The demanding relationship with her husband, the loss of a child, their own physical exhaustion, have driven them to morphine. And there is James Tyrone, the little respected family patriarch. He is an actor who somehow did it. But what does that mean? In any case, the financial success remains unsatisfactory, as he cannot abolish the witty of the father. The older son Jamie is an alcohol dilapidated saboteur of himself and the rest of the family. The younger Eddie is not only the victim of the others, not least his late brother, but also of tuberculosis that threatens to get him away. This compulsory community, which “dissected” a long day trip to the night “, is permeated with distrust and fear.

In the current season, this piece, which is rarely mentioned without the hint that it is an autobiographically colored work by the American dramatist Eugene O’Neill, already came on stage in new productions in Bochum, Dresden and Nuremberg. So now at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. As a director, Sebastian Nübling introduces himself to the house, who is not unknown in the capital due to his years of work on the Maxim Gorki Theater.

But how does Nübling do this psychological chamber game, this highly compressed character study, this shattering view of the caditrophic small family? This cannot be clearly said when a strong final applause in the hall sounds after a good two hours. This ambiguity may be the greatest weakness of this theater evening. In any case, the psychological, that can be said, was largely driven out.

At first a little stage music sounds. The iron curtain drives up a bit and then abruptly let down again. The process is repeated. Finally, Julia Gräfner (who will later give the maid Cathleen) appears on the front stage, introduces ourselves as an inspiration and refers to technical problems. So Bernd Moss, as James Tyrone, who rises from the floor and climbs onto the stage, and Almut Zilcher, who declamates her text from the rank, “improvise”. A pseudoorigine idea, a piece of theater in the theater that comes quite cramped and imposes something strangely light -footed and strange to the rushing family drama.

Nd.Diewoche – Our weekly newsletter

With our weekly newsletter . We’re Doing Look at the most important topics of the week and read them Highlights our Saturday edition on Friday. Get the free subscription here.

The staging therefore focuses on the conflicts in this theater family and wants to tell something about the theater itself. Occasionally, the actors switch between the announced O’Neill and the little sophisticated game in the game. However, there is little knowledge.

On the other hand, it is striking how little the playing styles of all in the ensemble want to come together. Bernd Moss, perhaps one of the strongest actors who are employed here at the theater, is quite convincing the conductive father. The Almut Zilcher, which almost always remarkable, does not find the right tone for this staging, the eternal -friendly Mary is not very nuance as the only big lament. Moritz Kienemann embodies the rebellious Jamie a little too flat as a small scream, and Svenja Liesau also doesn’t really find her role of seriously ill Eddie.

Soon the Läppische Gett to the family horror trip darkens. Nübling finds large, but not always cliché -free pictures for the stage – between waving fog, an abandoned single -family house and rabbit masks (a somewhat to be wanted reminiscence of the filmmaker David Lynch died during the rehearsal period).

“There is no rescue,” says Kienemann’s Jamie. In fact, Nübling also repays the last bit of hope in his staging. Everything, everything is consecrated. This can be felt. You can’t always follow your head.

Then Julia Gräfner steps forward again and speaks a text as a great epilogue that Israeli dramatist Sivan Ben Yishai wrote as a so -called poetic position on the current events under the title “How to Stay”.

Ben Yishai’s text is a very veritable complaint that should let us understand that the broken family of the Tyrones shows the broken society. “We will stay,” says the author. The individual family members remain in their toxic structure, and we do not all escape the community, which is so little together. Soon it is about violence and deportation. You get the feeling that uncomfortable topics find a form for the first time that evening. As a spectator, you are already quite lost.

Because with the rest of the staging, this does not want to come together. Suddenly everything should be related to everything here – a theatrical claim that has to remain quite unsatisfactory. The broken family works here as a symbol. But what for? Perhaps the figures in their facets should have been made understandable. So there is only a diffuse discomfort.

Next performances: 9, 12th and 20th February

www.deutschestheater.de