"But viewed from the other side there is also a comedy"

"But viewed from the other side there is also a comedy"


In every tragedy, they say, is indeed the humor buried: So Armin Petras staged a bitter-sweet John Gabriel Borkman at the intimate theater.

Frida Foldal (Hanna Plaß) sits with her flirtatious Glühwürmchensonnenschirm at the piano in front of the stage and sings Rio Reiser.

Behind her, forcing his way through the narrow aisles of a sloping bergwerkanmutenden stage design (stage: Olaf Altmann), a tall, slim, immaculately person: Wiebke pulse enters as Ella Rentheim after a long time, the house where her sister lived together with man.

While John Gabriel Borkman (Andre Young), according to his social decline in total isolation in the lives upstairs, is the quirky Mrs. Borkman (Christian King) sitting on the ground floor, together with her husband only by the scraping sound of his footsteps. Between the sisters began a wonderful conversation that oscillates constantly between feigned joy of reunion and sarcastic nastiness. Wiebke Puls and Christian King going on here seen in their roles, in jagged, durchchoreographierten movements affect them like figures in a dream world.

Ella suffers from an incurable disease and wants Erhart (Lasse Myhr), the son of Borkman, she once took at the time of "crisis" as the pupil himself, seek emotional support. This has been different: he sets off with his mistress, a lot of them older Fanny Wilton (Hildegard Schmahl).

"Yes, yes, you were to me the most expensive thing on earth, but if it must be unconditional, can be replaced by another woman."

Told in sarcastic conversation, the tragic past of the family Borkman: Because Ella, Borkman's the real true love, is this drive, he says, in financial ruin. In fact, he has speculated in, directed to a bank and there is little reason to other values, like love or fidelity. (This is especially harped on the critique of capitalism Petras')

Once dismounted imprisonment isolated Borkman is almost entirely from the outside world.

Chained to his desk on the upper floor (probably also due to the safety instructions), is Andre Young from a Kafkaesque picture which he plays beautifully.


The strange, sad joke on the floor all the characters are aware of the bizarre nature of their statements at any time and thus provoke many an audience laugh. - It seems that Petras had worked out in his version of Ibsen's play all the ambiguous scenes and questioned them on their comic way. But despite these sometimes hysterically funny conversations already are wearing an invisible gravity through the production, which is primarily expressed through tonal underpainting and the audience again and again to the hidden tragedy of the story recalls that remains present in every utterance.

Rarely, you leave the theater with lasting impressions. That evening remained above all the wit and the symbolic imagery of the stage design in mind, if one disregards the capitalism debacle. This may perhaps be too many a lot to me, at least the three hours went by too quickly.