Mr. Mockinpott's suffering has an organic reason: his heart is in his pants.
Therefore, in the sixth picture of Peter Weiss' play, written in 1963, "How the suffering is expelled from Mr. Mockinpott", it is stuffed back into his shirt in a grotesque operation further up.
At the same time, his skull is opened and his brain is seasoned with a mixture of pepper and ketchup.
But the therapeutic measure gives him neither the sharp thinking nor the courage - he just can't cry anymore.
Only after the audience with God, who no longer knows to what extent his company still works, does he receive the prophesied enlightenment: Mockinpott has had enough of all the fraud, finally gets angry and leaves.
Weiss and Litwin are kindred spirits in their orientation to Bertolt Brecht, but it is only with Litwin's pointed music that the deliberately awkward text in Knittelversen finds its higher art character.
The individually challenged ensemble of fifteen instrumentalists under the direction of Alexis Agrafiotis has the main task, because for each of the eleven scenes the cast, style and character vary as in a superordinate game of deception, everything in rapid succession.
The operation scene, for example, is accompanied by deep palpitations and dizzying music without (harmonic) ground and ground.
In the picture “Beside the Government”, parodies of the march and scraps of the Deutschlandlied appear, the music alternates between rhythmic bustle and surreal emptiness.
Before ironizing a grotesque waltz,
the short epiphany of a string quartet or a dull contrabassoon for Mockinpott's rival (Benjamin Kaygun) the plot, later a concertante trombone will take over the voice of God - here wonderfully smug as an old woman in a fur coat at the walker (Julia Suzanne Buchmann, also as Mockinpott's wife).
With the cowbells, the four angels also have a leading instrument that illustrates their rattling tin wings.
They are also the only protagonists allowed to sing alongside Mockinpott, a recurring "Miserere" in the weird "old" style.
Mockinpott himself only sings until his operation - after which he can only croak and giggle.
Zachariah N. Kariithi not only ennobles the title role with a warm, lyrically flowing baritone, but also as an actor,
who brings the ridiculous type of simpleton into the character compartment and finds in the audience what he is looking for in vain on stage: compassion.
Alone in his hopeless attempts to put the right shoe on the right foot without ever falling into impatience or even anger, one would gladly come to him for help.
Only at the end does he figure it out when he has learned to walk (away).
Rhythmic speech is intended for the other protagonists, which the actor Robert Prinzler masters brilliantly as Mockinpott's adversary Wurst.
Directed by Christoph Diem, they are all members of a circus troupe, are dressed in Elena Gaus's clown costumes and occasionally move outside from the circus tent, which is open to the front, which allows for an intermediate curtain (stage design: Florian Barth).
Mockinpott and Wurst also meet there after the operation that Wurst brought him to.
And it's not just in this scene that something happens that is thought to have been lost for a long time: Diem sticks to Weiss' stage directions just as meticulously as Litwin does to the text.
The Doctor aims the hammer at Mockinpott's head, but instead of hitting it, he keeps aiming it over his body until he gets to his knee.
He hits Mockinpott's knee with the hammer, the leg flies up, hitting the doctor, the doctor falls over.
.
.”
Only the round, white table on which Mockinpott is strapped and which rotates before lifting to the vertical is not by Weiss.
Not even that the government consists of a bear and two sloths, but their speech bubbles and proclamations, broadcast to the audience via stadium loudspeakers, are current steep templates, because "aren't we determined to continue on the path we have taken in these responsible times?
Determined to do everything, undauntedly open to negotiations?”