Vthey dance the tango in front of the House of Representatives. Down by the water, the couples are circling, old and young weave their way through each other, floating back and forth around a boom box from which wistful sounds set the rhythm. How often has it been written that the Berlin government district is dead, a desolate area, only monumental buildings, unapproachable, hard-hearted, motionless. This is contradicted in a graceful way on this late evening: people dance tenderly with each other, sit laughing by the river, a bicycle courier brings new beer, every now and then a tourist boat returning home passes by. Then the couples pause and wave to the weary staff on deck. Everything in the middle. There, where usually only the security services say good night shortly before midnight. A little dream.
Appropriate to the big one, which you have just seen coming to an end, on the Kammerspiel stage of the Deutsches Theater: “We are made of the same stuff dreams are made of,” Prospero whispered to the audience at the end, the expelled Duke from Milan, who was banished by his competitors to an island between Tunis and Naples and could now take bitter revenge on all his enemies, the usurpers and drunkards, whom he forced onto his island through a storm he unleashed. But instead of taking revenge, he prefers to keep dreaming. Talks about the sleep that surrounds all of our lives. And he says “Welcome” to each of his opponents individually.
It’s nice here too
Wolfram Koch can say this “welcome” in about forty-seven variants, always with a new emphasis and with a different attitude. Virtuoso, self-deprecating, lived – this is how Koch plays this Prospero. Not as an intellectual who got his sorcerer’s apprentice powers from books, but as a failed magician sustained by his good spirits. Koch plays this moral man who puts love instead of hate and after his gracious decision simply steps aside without making a big fuss, just calmly leaves the island – in this case: the stage – and so succinctly as hopeful says: “It’s beautiful here too” – Koch plays this Prospero as Gustav Landauer once imagined him: “completely as the antithesis of Christ, who climbs from the cross to heaven”.
Eyes with dark make-up, long hair hanging tangled from his skull, he is the homeless counter-saviour, who lacks magic powers. “Heaven is empty,” he whispers, “all the devils are here.” The line becomes the motto of this evening. Various figures repeat the sentence again and again, and above all sing it. The whole ensemble – except for Koch – sings, and not just in any way, but ambitiously and heartbreakingly. Above all, Lorena Handschin as air spirit Ariel has an almost Lady Gaga-like tone in her voice when she floats across the stage in a dazzling glitter dress (almost all of Kathrin Plath’s costumes quote the 1970s) and breathes that Shakespeare line into the microphone as if it were a famous line in a pop song: “hell is empty and / all the devils are here”.
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