Berlin Herzlos! A music theatre production

2+3 June 07, 20:00h
Studio of the School of Music
“Hanns Eisler”
Charlottenstr. 55
Entrance: Free


Berlin, Love, Food, Narcissism, Glamour. I enter the evening with high hopes. The performance team whole-heartedly promises to excavate the remains of opera, searching for something like the heart or mind. The audience is seated in small islands throughout the room, facing each other’s reactions. I’m not really convinced. Will it be as new and inspiring as it promises? Merle Vierck & Emily Laumanns’ cold, almost slick stage design seduces me and I enter a gallery room. Is this an opening night? There are white podiums, pieces of art, a grand piano and a huge corny flower bouquet. I sense movement behind me. I seriously did not expect a chef standing behind me cooking the sweetest, icky, little, gelatine desserts I have ever seen. A tense noise catches my attention. I turn around and realize it s a golden water cooker –which doesn’t stop steaming and cooking throughout the rest of the evening.

Leftovers of grand opera pieces, improvisation and pop-trash determine the musical layers of the night. The four singers desperately hold up the mask of grand gesture, but the music disappears, leaving them in a room of uncertainty, confronted by their own fears. This silence is obscenely disturbed by the noise of the water cooker and the rattle of the flatware. The Diva, an excellent performance by (Ulrike Schwab), jumps into a dialogue with her own heart. It seems to have stopped beating?! She is young, vital, and vivid--why should her heart decide to stop beating? Through out the whole evening Ulrike Schwab creates a frighteningly thin line between herself and her significant role. She is fully endowed with the talent of a new opera superstar and the audience is forced to watch her struggle and fail to full fill her role. Her own consciousness seems to have backstabbed her. The male star (Martin Gerke) surrenders. Trying to leave the room he discovers: We are locked in. The singers try to break down the doors in an eruption of anger and fear. They fail and slide into agony and finally numbness. The handsome singer (Roman Lemberg) climbs into a huge freezer and creates space by throwing out piles of frozen stuffed animals. Hidden in a corner is a podium with a table and stool on top. A frail, gaunt woman sits on the stool surrounded by dozens of mixers, blenders, juicers and tons of fruits. She is in underwear with a silky bathrobe. It is the director, Miriam Salevic, unable to finish her own work. She vegetates in front of random kitchen supplies and every now and then, in sheer lunacy, she jerks up to play on the grand piano -giving and again taking the hopes of the singers to a grand moment. While the singers literally yearn for one moment of silence, one spotlight, one aria. Systematically their desire for catharsis via performance is subverted. The evening ends rather abruptly. The stage designer appears and brings an end to the pain and exhaustion by leading the scrawny director off stage draining the room of its frenetic energy.

So is exiling the director equivalent to sucking out the life of a performance piece? I cannot say, but with Miriam Salevic gone, the air gets thick, and I can smell the fear. The words, the sentence forms in my head, my mouth. The fear of the singers: Finally I’m not part of it anymore. What is left? Hunger, Desire, Trash, Expectations.

Now sing!