Anyone who stands such a mountain on the gigantic stage of the Schauspielhaus Hamburg neither wants to explain nor improve the world, they just want to play. This joke, adorned with all sorts of stick figures and animal pictures and rivers and symbols in the style of colorfully restored cave paintings and turned paper mache, is huge and at the same time dreamy, like an oversized icing that has slipped on some delicious, invisible baked goods. The set designer Barbara Steiner designed this curious monster for the world premiere of René Pollesch's latest project "J'accuse!", Which he himself staged. To call it a piece would not be appropriate, because Pollesch often writes, and this time too, rather set pieces whose disparate subjects he just does not connect.

His “J'accuse!” Has nothing to do with Emile Zola's famous letter about the Dreyfus affair and borrows from it at most the gesture of passionate accusation without referring to historical facts.

For Sophie Rois, however, it is once again a good opportunity to conjure up the vocal omnipotence and grandeur of Maria Callas, for example, with pathetic outbursts of "I accuse!"

Straw sombreros and macho poses

Like her four teammates, she is initially in sturdy shoes and dungarees made of denim because they visit an amusement park that is modeled on the Wild West and in which full-grown robots cavort next to humans. The latter can be gunned down by the would-be cowboys with impunity and yet are not dead, just temporarily out of order. It is similar in Michael Crichton's science fiction film “Westworld” (1973), in which things naturally get out of hand and the machines become unruly and Pollesch is more or less based on the content here.

The stage play mountain is climbed or it is turned in a circle or it deconstructs itself by showing its rear side - bare screwed struts and a lot of empty air.

In between, its summit likes to stand out from the Massif Central and floats independently through the area, as if the rest was none of its business.

The ravishingly enjoyable actresses celebrate the high western school, shoot around, challenge each other to a duel, throw threatening looks from under their straw sombreros.

They talk to each other by male names and try out macho poses with relish.

A completely cocky saloon shootout

Pollesch's “J'accuse!” Had to be postponed for months because of the pandemic. Therefore, in addition to the jokes about Niklas Luhmann's system theory (how do you explain it to a robot?), The term "system relevance" has probably also been preserved, which is now only faintly remembered in the context of all the technical terms that Corona brought with it. And so “subsidized” permanent employees meet guests, i.e. freelancers (solo self-employed?), Which you don't have to understand, but which is extremely amusing in the semantic noise and stoic slang of the ensemble. Sachiko Hara gives the slightly crazy, not perfectly programmed robot Arty. Angelika Richter as Peter, on the other hand, does not trust the machines and comes into competition with a magnificent and "authentic" cow with brown spots on the light fur,which is brought in in a scene.

The many topics that are juggled with relish and absurdity include theater-specific allusions to the question raised by Marie Rosa Tietjen as John at the end of whether "directors in any position in normal management would achieve something out there". Eva Maria Nikolaus doesn't really care about that, she describes herself - “Welcome to the West World” - as the boss of the mountain hotel. “At lunchtime they have to eat somewhere else,” she says defiantly, and Sophie Rois, as her guest, is already flabbergasted: “I accuse!” In all the cheerfully accelerated patchwork of splintered thoughts, speculations and daring assertions (“The world is perhaps eh just an insinuation ") she delivers the craziest scene of the evening with Peter by,when asked for the full name of her character, "Peppi" answers and drops a lighter on the floor. And when she is supposed to spell the unusual surname, she says: “NIPP hyphen EL” After so much unrestrained mess with the terms and meanings - “Well, gentlemen!” - a completely high-spirited saloon shootout is inevitable.

René Pollesch's staging of “J'accuse!” Succeeds as a turbulent theoretical slalom between the most varied of trigger points, which creates its autonomous scope as well as its anarchic freedom of context in the “communication medium of art”.

What smart fun!

What a nice theater!