John Gabriel Borkman. 4th part of the Ibsen saga. Season 2 / performances #20–25

In re-evaluating the basic questions of theatre – representation, performability, fakes, dramatic masterplans and their frustration through performance – Vinge and his team cross all the theatre’s usual pain thresholds and make a deliberate departure from a hyper-artistic scenario. Following the uniform dramaturgy of contemporary computer games more than Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, the white-masked actors move like avatars through a complex papier maché work of art located somewhere between a ghost train, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Augsburger Puppenkiste on speed. Ibsen’s text is reduced down to a few core sentences spoken with distorted electronic voices and repeated as if on a loop: Vinge and Müller translate the psychological drama about a banker facing criminal charges into the free-running symptoms which – also in reaction to Borkmann’s view of society – exclude none of the violent fantasies of the 20th and 21st centuries. Instead of spelling out neuroses and repressions verbally, these are acted out physically in a brilliantly deceptive children’s bedroom theatre world – and differently each evening. Ibsen has never been seen like this.

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