Dhe festival “Radar Ost” at the Deutsches Theater, which has been presenting important productions from Eastern Europe for five years, brought plays to Berlin this time that were created after the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine and work on it. Since the country focus was inevitably on Ukraine, it was also about plays that were created in exile, or in the case of what is probably the most important production, a Hamlet variation by the Kiev Left Bank Theatre, a work that was only made possible thanks to the cooperation with the German theater was able to celebrate its premiere here at all.
The force was due to begin rehearsals on February 24, 2022, which the Russian attack thwarted. The head director of the house, Tamara Trunova, then wrote a dramatic text about a performance that could not take place, i.e. a Hamlet without an actor’s self, and appropriately named the work, removing the letters for “I” (Me) from the title character, “Ha *l*t”.
A Hamlet evening without dramatic text
So the drama of the hesitating Danish prince becomes an evening without a drama text, which once again brings to mind the shock of the new reality, but also urgently raises the cursed Hamlet questions in view of this war. At the beginning, the actor Oleh Stefan greets the audience on the front stage, which is furnished with chairs, for a follow-up discussion and explains that his colleagues will also come out of the dressing room in a moment.
When they arrive, it becomes clear that they live in a fantasy world where the Russian invasion, as many hoped, did not take place. Gradually they realize that they are not in Kiev, that there was no premiere, and that their colleague Volodymyr Kravchuk, who embodies Fortinbras, is absent because he is fighting at the front. Kravchuk, who is shown on video in full soldier’s gear, links and contrasts the real war with the sensitivities of those who deal with it mentally in exile.
Are war fugitives cowards?
As the iron curtain rises, a black room with glowing red Christmas trees welcomes the ensemble, a kind of limbo where they meander through key verses of the drama in somnambulistic monologues, questioning to be or not, realizing that the fear of the unknown after death cowards makes of them, and that the comfort-seeking man is a beast.
As a leitmotif, they remind us again and again of the young army commander and his followers, thousands of men ready to die, out in the field. The exiled artists recommend themselves to the German audience with a Ukrainian dirge and a round dance in which they sarcastically and desperately cry out the names of Ukrainian poets, singers and filmmakers who died at the front. Paradoxically, the escape also fueled her career: Oleh Stefan notes with bitterly ironic pride that he appeared at the Berliner Ensemble as a result of the war.
The Kiev cabaret troupe Dakh Daughters again performed a pitch-black “Danse Macabre” which they worked on with their director Vlad Troitskyi last summer in exile in France. After a short flashback with fragments of a famous Maidan song, the war siren howls, and while the actresses push trolley suitcases with illuminated house facades across the dark stage, one of them recites from the Book of Job about how Satan destroys his belongings and family. The evening is also a commemoration of the dead in plaintive songs, a folk rap imitates the cry of the raven, and a bat ghost dances to refrain-like Russian calls “Die” (Umri).
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