John Gabriel Borkman

The 31-year-old Australian’s method is simple, yet striking: Only very little original text remains of the plays that he applies himself to. He retells the story in his own, modern-day words. This version of Ibsen’s “John Gabriel Borkman” is set in the present, where people google themselves and follow each other on Facebook. The financial scandal that sent Borkman to prison has left persistent traces on the Internet. Similarly to the characters, who only gradually dig themselves out of the drifts of continuous snow-fall created by designer Katrin Brack, disgrace and shame are only superficially covered up. In the icy setting of this often astonishingly funny production, a society of wolves gets ready to tear each other to pieces. Martin Wuttke as a long-haired, degenerate outcast Borkman who pisses into buckets, Birgit Minichmayr as his deeply disappointed wife, the alcoholic diva Gunhild, and Caroline Peters as her sister, a cancer patient who has come home to die, are pulling no punches. The others take to their heels (Max Rothbart as son Erhart) or go to the dogs (Roland Koch as a woolly-minded Foldal). High-pressure theatre, where no prisoners are taken and even the dying exit giving a defiant victory sign.

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