"Fuck the housewife!" is still one of the cozy calls for this evening of games and crashes. Edward Albees has long been "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" from 1962 textually no strong theatrical Tobak - but still nobody can escape the souls striptease of the couple Martha and George until today. Since the grandiose adaptation that Mike Nichols delivered in 1966 with the dream couple Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, the piece is part of the program canon. Because the roles are, as it formulated Devid Striesow before the premiere at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, best "actor food". Let the games begin!
Devid Striesow will give the frustrated, fully-alcoholic provincial lecturer George, who runs the historic seminar at the college of Martha's father. Maria Schrader, also an aggressive and stress-tested bundle of frustration, routinely defies George. A well-balanced duo with director Karin Beier is more than right. The viewer has the feeling that Beier had to let the two off the leash to take full swing for the crash. After the university party, a visit is expected in the form of the young couple Nick (Matti Krause) and "Sweetie" (Josefine Israel). They have no idea of the Martha / George abysses, especially as Nick wants to start as a fresh junior biology lecturer a career at the provincial university. The mucus trail is laid.
Shrieking and unreservedly
Karin Beier's production starts from 0 to 100, which offers Striesow and Schrader the full breadth of the sparsely equipped stage (cleverly and accentuated by Thomas Dreissigacker). Immediately, the director sends the two on the path of bitterness, knowing that the first thirty minutes decide on the pull that must carry the piece over the 2 hours.
Even as Nick and Mrs emerge a little later, this river does not let up. The skilfully choreographed performers in the pale light of the then fashionable Japanese paper lamps in the stage whole support the occasionally somewhat aged text again and again. But what does it matter if a screeching, wholeheartedly acting couple waddles in the mire of accumulated frustrations from the beating of the whiskey-feeding Martha and George?
Abyssal Games
Slowly peels out: It's about children. George and Mary have a son who exists only in their imagination, whom they pour whiskey-like over her sore mind as a comfortable hope-giver. Nick and "Sweetie" have an aggression package that they carry with them because of a fake pregnancy, disappointment. And so all play their games, abysmal board games. When Martha breaks the basic rule "Never talk about our son with others," George lashes out, flees the house, returns soon, and starts the funeral of the imaginary son with flowers: "Flores para los muertos!" (Flowers for the dead). The end is about to begin.
As much as Karin Beier drives her actors to boiling crescendos and outrageous rampant excesses, so controlled she reduces the emotions down to the almost deadly emotional and physical excesses. Martha and George see the chance of a new life in the morning after the "death" of their son. Touching, dreary, hopeful.
After her "King Lear", Karin Beier once again succeeds in cleverly and efficiently casting an aged text in an intelligent way, without forcibly reinterpreting it. In the very restrained and therefore so effectively accentuated light (Annette ter Meulen), the emotions of the actor quartet glow and disappear into a sad flickering. When a theatrical finale produces such tremendous empathy, it is blissful.
"Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" runs among others on the 20th, 21st and 25th of January at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Further dates can be found here.