An evening about dreams was announced. A few hours full of foams could be seen. Seventy-eight times: falling asleep, startling, realizing: but nothing has happened. All just deception. Fleeting and pale. Hardly seen, forgotten again. The many scenes, the many faces – they pass by without leaving a lasting impression. Pictures of an exhibition that does not know what it is supposed to mean.
Simon Strauss
Editor in the arts section.
- Follow I follow
That which is the saddest thing about dreaming, the unfinished, broken, incoherent, is the focus of this "spectacle with music". Director Andrea Breth came up with it during the pandemic. As a collage of literary texts, pieces of music and film quotes, as a potpourri of scenes without thread. Sometimes musical medley, sometimes number revue, then again sketch performance or choreographed dance interlude. The whole thing takes place in front of seven doors. Sometimes pulled together into a tiny antechamber, sometimes opened to the wide portal, Raimund Orfeo Voigt's stage offers an environment that feels timeless, but through which costumes and props are firmly located in the fifties and sixties: corded telephones, sunglasses, puzzle books form the conditions of an existence that is laconically touched.
Scenes are emancipated
Most of the songs that are sung, most of the lyrics that are spoken, most of the quotes that are quoted are from the good old days. The approximately three hours refer to a golden then and yet actually want to be free of any classification. But they lack the sovereignty in terms of content. Carelessly, the romantic is thrown over the whole thing as a cover. Are the scenes eichendorffiert. To then be confronted with dream texts by Heiner Müller, Wolfgang Bächler or Theodor W. Adorno. All too often, the spectacle is left with little more than to show surfaces. Because it is not allowed to remember, but only to quote.
The fact that the evening does not know exactly what it wants to tell is one thing. That he is not sure of his mood, the other, in this case more serious. What can a mishmash of Schumann songs, David Lynch scenes and Dieter Hildebrandt satire lead to? Except for the unsatisfying feeling of endless reference possibilities? That dreams follow such a chaos principle is a long-corrected misunderstanding. The context of those images that we encounter in our sleep often exceeds our idea of logic. This does not mean, however, that their appearance and sequence did not obey a law. It is the patterns that the dream interpreters are looking for.
Changeability of dreams
But there is no trace of them this evening. Instead: Again and again the demolition, the startle. Not the essence, but the changeability of dreams should be the theme. Brought to the stage, this often seems awkward, sometimes trivial.
And yet, although the frame is shaky, the excellent ensemble manages to create some outstanding scenes. Especially Johanna Wokalek, Corinna Kirchhoff and Alexander Simon have wonderful solo numbers. For example, when Kirchhoff, as an "old-school lady" with a handbag and buttoned-up dress, leans diagonally against the wall and longs to "say something mean, sometimes to wear silk underwear / to know it right and kiss a gigolo". Or when Alexander Simon does exactly that to the old Friedrich Hollaender song "Ich machen alles mit den Beinen": struts in, fumbles the ladies, uses his shin as a weapon and makes all the embarrassment of the performance forget with his "leginess". Later he had further striking appearances with the Czech parody song "Schlemihl Emil" or as a Thomas Brasch reciter crawling across the floor.
And then the Wokalek. For a long time she was missed on the theater stage, now she is suddenly back. In a trench coat, with her pumps in her hand, as if she were just passing through, without a suitcase, but with a tender laugh. With this she accompanies a Germanized Elvis hit: "But when a door goes / then I imagine, you can be it" – and only because she laughs quietly into the melody again and again, not arrogantly, but rather astonished, arises from the lard number suddenly a melancholic moment.
An early happiness
A little later she begins to sing herself, with slightly protruding hips and sweeping arm movements, she imitates Caterina Valente: "Everything is different with you." To be able to watch this for a while is an early happiness in the midst of all the slamming doors and hastily changing pitches. Later, there are even more of them: For example, when she performs a French version of "Fever" in a dressy entanglement with her handbag straps or makes the farewell announcement as a resolutely tuned Air Berlin purserette before the very last take-off of the bankrupt airline.
Breth's evening suffers from his frequent departures. They destroy the mood. They shorten the imagination theatre eagerly awaited by the audience to a revue-like vaudeville. What a pity. Because how much one would have liked to see this ensemble play under her direction. That would have been a dream.