Reich des Todes

That this production doesn’t waver from this very hubris for the entire duration of the performance is a considerable feat. Both author and director claim that a fall from grace of our epoch was caused by and is epitomised by characters like Donald Rumsfeld or George W. Bush. Goetz gives these men German names and Beier sends them onstage as very “German” characters, and through this device they announce our complicity in the crimes committed by the US. What we see on this dungeon-like stage, designed by Johannes Schütz, is a frenzy of video images, dance scenes and impersonated politicians, an almost Brechtian theatre of enlightenment and memory. The moment the World Trade Center was hit by planes and collapsed marks the beginning of the demolition of American democracy and humanity in general. Through devices including a Hitler-parody, the actors demonstrate the kinship between fascist brutalisation and the cynicism of 21st century power politics. The fascination of crime and the archaic scandal of violence are depicted in grotesquely aestheticised scenes of war and torture. Skirting the borderlines of bad taste, the pain of a mistreated, blood-covered individual is expressed in dance, showing the horrors of the Abu Ghuraib prison camp. Over the course of the performance, however, the realistic horrors turn more and more into abstract monstrosity. Whenever the intensity of the images on stage abates, an orchestra of voices invokes the thunderstorm of thoughts inside the poet’s head and the mortal fear in all of us. At one point, a jubilant voice seems to come straight from the mouth of playwright Goetz: “How crazy, how messed-up!” Staying largely close to the text, this production is both highly neurotic, polemic, political contemporary theatre and an immoderate, splendidly gloomy, disturbing description of our present times.