Theater Magdeburg – “The Hamlet machine”: Outlooked pictures

On Friday, “The Hamlet Machine”, Heiner Müller’s most famous play, celebrated premiere at the Magdeburg Theater, which was just honored by an invitation to the Berlin Theater Meeting. In this case, it is worth getting to get further and tell the prehistory of this staging.

On May 29 of last year, the new stage work and reversal for the current season were announced in a press conference. At this point in time, “the game is out”, an adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s film screenbook, was still in the schedule. At the beginning of December the news came: “The hamlet machine” should be, Sartre has to wait. On the occasion, as it was said. All of these processes are plentiful for a rather low -shaped institution like a city theater.

But what should that mean specifically? »We have reacted to socio -political changes. Especially on elections, election results that have made us affected: be it the European elections, the election in Argentina, the state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. The impression that people in democratic systems no longer automatically act for democracies became increasingly clear. All of this culminated a day when Trump was re-elected and the traffic light government disassembled, «says Clara Weyde, the director of production and since 2022 acting chief at the Magdeburg Theater.

Inevitably Theodor W. Adorno comes to mind, who – in an interview with the “Spiegel” in May 1969 – on the introductory remark of journalist “Professor, two weeks ago the world still seemed okay …” intervening with the words reacted: “Not me.”

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.

Has the world changed so much so quickly – and in such an undesirable way? Did Sartre’s play, which are at least personal and political betrayal, about rebellion and class differences, to say so little today? And why was it ever on the game plan? On the other hand, what about Müller’s “Hamlet machine”? Is this piece – this examination of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, this dialogue with the dead and great song on the “ruins of Europe” – the right answer to populism and global jacks for which the elections mentioned stand?

Clara Weyde and her team at least screwed up the public expectations with their plan changes for current occasion. So now we should “the Hamlet machine” in a ten -member line -up, just right for “the game is out”, and with an alpine ski hut, designed as a stage design for “The game is made of” that explain the present.

For this, Müller’s text, which, simply read out, would hardly use half an hour on stage, with set pieces from the other work of the author and from the pop culture as well as foreign language deflects and a lot of action -packed game between the clown number and psychocrimic, so that in the end a good two -hour theater evening came out.

Sure, the “Battle of Greenland”, of which Müller writes, reaps some laughs and arouses associations with the madness that you now have to hear from the White House. Otherwise, the piece that shows Müller’s reading of the “Hamlet” drama that makes Ophelia become a avenger and that fantasizes the uprising, in which he can hardly believe himself, is largely abstract and is not reduced to daily policy .

In the choice of scenic means, this staging even looks more yesterday than is particularly present. A lot of artificial blood, clown noses and bare skin reveal a cliché picture of the theater. In addition, the mistake of interpreting Müller’s actually unplayable text in a representative manner: Instead of letting the text work through restraint, it is charged everywhere vocally meaningful and torn out against the will. If Tocotronic texts are then recited for minutes, an excess of pathos has already been achieved.

The theater makers would like the contemporary reference to the mood, since Heiner Müller anticipated the final decay of the GDR with his piece from 1977. (On the part of the theater, it is also incorrectly rumored that “the hamlet machine” was never printed in the GDR.) Whether the parallel is not just a feeling at the present time is as a question.

Socialism, for Müller certainly a hope project, and his foreseeable end followed completely different laws than those that require the excesses of deficit democracies today. And even if you wanted to make a connection plausible here, it would need a scenic idea that is more than mere claim. Elements of Mitmachtheater help as little as Majen Marx quotes.

Ultimately, after this theater evening, the deep impression of Müller’s word of word remains. The lust of the actresses to engage in it, and the boldness of the theater, to use “the hamlet machine” in order to behave to the present, are worth all honors. But it is apparently not in the staging of your own concern.

“My drama no longer takes place,” is one of the most concise and best known sentences from “The Hamlet machine”. Immediately before it says: “My thoughts suck the blood out of the pictures.” The Müller’s heavy thought was also able to add the Magdeburg staging not to add theater pictures that extended beyond the illustrative or harmless-humorist.

Next performances: 7., 16. And 28.2.
www.theater-magdeburg.de