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"Theatre"
For years now, I have been trying to figure out and describe what exactly is so special about German theatre. In some ways, particularly from the perspective of the English-speaking theatre world, it may seem like I’d need to draw up a pretty long list of oddities: no historical costumes, no respect for the text, […]
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Jette Steckel’s production of Arthur Schnitzler’s Das Weite Land at the Deutsche Theater makes no efforts to reinvent much of anything. It’s a very well done, moderately inventive staging of a classic — and it’s remarkable precisely because it is so unremarkable in context. This is simply a good example of what “normal” looks like […]
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An empty stage, sliced diagonally in half by dolly tracks running from downstage right to upstage left; on those tracks, a grand piano on a cart, equipped with a microphone for the player. The pianist enters, sits at the piano, and starts a tentative vocal improv. Lights off. The cast shuffle on. Lights up. Actors […]
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I should be writing about the two Woyzecks I’ve seen this week, and about Karin Henkel’s fantastic John Gabriel Borkmann. But the other thing I’ve been watching, other than plays, is Q&As – and I have a few questions.
They’re a funny ritual, those post-show talkbacks. At Theatertreffen, they’re obligatory: most of the cast, the […]
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(Off the cuff and short.)
My evening in the Volksbuehne: Frank Castorf directing The Master Builder.
4 hours of Ibsen. Well. 4 hours of Ibsen and a lot of other stuff. 4 hours of nine life-sized dolls of the former Volksbuehne star Henry Hübchen being thrown around on stage; 4 hours of actors walking in […]
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Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater, under the new artistic leadership that took charge last season, has quite aggressively redefined itself as what they call a post-migrant theatre — building an ensemble deliberately designed to reflect the multi-ethnic makeup of contemporary Germany (and especially contemporary Berlin), and staging a repertoire in which new plays, often with an […]
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What happens when a German theatre hires a French Canadian choreographer to direct a play by Shakespeare? Something very Canadian. Dave St-Pierre’s staging of Macbeth at the Schauspiel Frankfurt is, in essence, a two-hour movement piece. The theatre, and some reviews, are trying to sell it as a synthesis of text-based theatre and dance/movement-based performance, […]
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I’m not sure I’ve ever seen as rigorous, as complete, and as compelling a piece of theatre on a UK stage as Ivo van Hove’s take on Arthur Miller’s View from the Bridge. What’s marvellous about the show is that it takes a thoroughly middle European aesthetic and investment in theatricality but allows its British […]
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Holger Syme's work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.Images may be reused as long as their source is properly attributed in accordance with the Creative Commons License detailed above. Many of the photos here were taken at the Folger Shakespeare Library; please consult their policy on digital images as well.
