The best laid plans: I was all set to write a couple of posts about the new theater season in Berlin, which began the week before I returned home after my seven-week visit, but oops! Life got in the way and all of a sudden I’ve already been back stateside for a month. Since it now feels forced to crank out that report, I’ve compiled the following list of the “cultural” highlights of my summer trip to Germany instead:
8. To be or not to be white trash
In early September I had dinner two nights in a row at a restaurant/nightclub in Prenzlauer Berg named “White Trash Fast Food.” The décor is classic Chinese restaurant meets no-tell motel cocktail lounge and there’s a DJ playing garage rock while scenes from John Waters (or Rosa von Praunheim or Russ Meyer or National Geographic or rock ‘n’ roll performance) movies are projected onto a large wall in the front of the dining area. Several new Berlin theater productions are offering variations on the same theme: If you ate some really bad meat at White Trash Fast Food, washed it down with several shots of Jägermeister, went home and passed out listening to a Nick Cave album (from ca. 1986), what would your dreams look like?
Exhibit A: at the Volksbühne, a re-staging of Tal der fliegenden Messer (“Valley of the Flying Knives”), directed by critical and audience favorite Rene Pollesch. The piece is performed in a small, unheated circus tent—the latest must-have accessory for Berlin theaters undergoing renovation or in need of additional playing space. Under two hours and without an intermission, the witty, casually over-the-top play is set in and around a Parisian strip club named Crazy Horse. The troupe of five actors and actresses are constantly videotaped and simulcast on a screen in the tent, as they change into and out of various gaudy showgirl/showboy outfits, get in and out of cars (I loved the tacky video projections to simulate driving) and argue with each other and passersby outside the historic house on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Money changes hands, revolvers get fired and, occasionally, the audience is treated to a lethargic group pole dance on the “main” stage of the tent. Throughout, the dialogue consists of earnest debating about bourgeois hypocrisy, sentimental socialism, the plight of the worker and common misinterpretations of Darwinian theory. I laughed, I cried, I froze my ass off.
Exhibit B: Now, before the premiere of Thomas Ostermeier’s staging of Hamlet, “white trash” would not have been a phrase I associated with the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, arguably the most celebrated theater in Germany since 1970. Over the years, the Schaubühne has been many things: a theater collective, a director’s theater, an anti-bourgeois provocation, a haven of artistic freedom, a star palace—producing dependably highbrow, state-of-the-art, expensive work. This Hamlet, staged by the Schaubühne‘s current artistic director, is a trash extravaganza. I’ve seen about ten productions of the tragedy on stage (including two at the Schaubühne) and screen, but this was first one in which the melancholy Dane wore a fat suit (for most of the play) or a platinum blonde wig, panties, bra, fishnets and heels (as the Player Queen). Lars Eidinger, one of the young stars of the current Schaubühne ensemble (and a nightclub DJ in his free time), delivers a performance in the title role that is eerily reminiscent of Heath Ledger’s turn as the Joker (see #3). When he isn’t breakdancing or spitting on his fellow actors, Eidinger sprinkles Shakespeare’s text with quotes from classic hip-hop (in English) and Nina Hagen (in German). Not exactly my cup of tea, but the man has an undeniably potent stage presence. Sporting ill-fitting tuxedos, retro sunglasses, greasy hair in need of a barber and unshaven faces, the gangster court of Elsinore scarfs down food from take-out containers, drinks wine-in-a-box, films itself (yet another onstage live video feed) and slaps each other around for over two hours without an intermission. The highlight of the evening: the opening moments, when Eidinger’s ghostly face is projected onto a scrim during his articulate and effective rendering of the “Sein oder nicht sein” (To be or not to be) soliloquy. The biggest misstep: the Act V duel between Hamlet and Laertes performed as a traditional fencing match, a jarring note in this lowlife setting.
Instead of the obligatory standing ovation so popular in New York and Los Angeles, the Berlin audience showed their appreciation with sustained and enthusiastic applause, remaining seated as the cast returned to the stage for seven bows.
7. Lunchtime concerts at the Berlin Philharmonic
Every Tuesday afternoon at 1 p.m. you can attend a free concert in the lobby of the Berlin Philharmonic. The series has become so popular since its debut a year ago that it can be hard to find a place to sit. Fortunately, you can plant yourself as close to the free-standing stage as you want. I was in town for the first two concerts after the summer break and was treated the first week to a survey of tango gems from the late 19th century to the present performed by Cantango Berlin. The following week featured string works by Stravinsky and Verdi performed by the Erlenbusch Quartet.
6. Fifth Annual Folsom Europe
The first week of September is Folsom Europe Week: Thousands of leather and fetish enthusiasts from around the globe assemble in Berlin for five days of “fellowship” and fun. For the uninitiated: Folsom is a street in San Francisco where the original annual event takes place; there’s also a Folsom East every June in New York. The highlight of this year’s Folsom Europe, for me at least, was not the official closing party in an inactive power plant, situated a little too close to a right-wing extremist stronghold, but rather the Saturday afternoon block party along a residential street in Schöneberg that happens to house a few leather bars. Before I had even left Los Angeles, I had made my buddy Tony promise to escort me to the block party. This was my first Folsom, but Tony, an American who has been living in Berlin with his German husband for years, was a little jaded. Instead of leather chaps or the little black latex number, he opted to dress in full Bavarian “tracht”: lederhosen made of khaki green goat suede, a white peasanty shirt, a dark green Tyrolean hat with gamsbart, dark green knee socks and brown hiking boots. Needless to say, he was one of the most photographed “leather men” of the day.
5. Bess, You Is My Woman Now” in Porgy and Bess at Hamburgische Staatsoper
4. Party in Friedrichshain
My husband’s 21-year-old nephew Balthasar moved from Cologne to Berlin this year to study at the Humboldt University. I’ve known him since he was eight or so and we normally only see each other at family gatherings, where we are both on our best behavior and/or completely exhausted. Consequently, it was a bit of a hoot to spend time with Balthasar away from the family—at the café in Prenzlauer Berg where he works, hanging out in Kreuzberg and, finally, at his going-away party. Balthasar was about to spend six months in London as an exchange student and invited me to dance the night away with him and his friends: “It starts at 10 pm and will go on to 10 am—with great techno music,” which he knew I can’t stand. But I dutifully set my alarm clock for 1 a.m. that Saturday night and took the subway to his friend’s tiny ground-floor apartment. Sadly (for Balthasar), the party stayed pretty quiet while I was there. But how often do I get the opportunity to spend a couple of hours dancing with a dozen twenty-something Berliners while watching Fargo, La Piscine and L’eclisse (both starring Alain Delon) playing simultaneously on three screens?
3. The Dark Knight in IMAX
Someone in Los Angeles told me that you couldn’t appreciate this film without seeing it in IMAX. Now, while I had my doubts about this, I did want to see it twice, primarily for Heath Ledger’s performance. Although the film got excellent reviews and was doing good business in Germany—$28.3 million so far compared to the $24.2 million total German box office for Spider-Man 2—none of my friends in Berlin, German or otherwise, had been rushing to see it. So in early September when my ex-roommate Anja and her husband said that they were dying to go but couldn’t handle the original (English-language) version, I agreed to join them—if they were willing to see it in IMAX. Unfortunately, on the evening of our movie date, Anja informed us that she had forgotten to reserve tickets, which meant that we ended up getting seated left of center in the second row. We were not thrilled at the thought of neck-craning sensory overload.
But we loved every minute of it. The effect was like being on an amusement park ride designed for grown-ups. Seeing the film in German actually enhanced my appreciation of it—kudos to the translator of the dubbing script and the director of the dubbing session. And to Simon Jäger, the voice actor who has dubbed six of Heath Ledger’s major roles since 2000.
Quivering, we left the cinema, headed to White Trash Fast Food (see #8) and tied one on.
2. noBody/Körper at the Schaubühne
Fifteen years ago, in mid-September 1993, I moved back to the US after living in Berlin for exactly ten years. That very same week in Holland, a young woman named Sasha Waltz presented her first major dance theater production. By 1996 she was one of the leading figures in the German dance scene and in 1999 she became the first female (co-)artistic director of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz (see #8), restoring the somewhat calcified temple of theater to its former cutting-edge glory. Widely regarded as the Pina Bausch of her generation, Waltz has since moved on from Lehniner Platz, but as a part of events commemorating her fifteenth anniversary, the Schaubühne remounted two of her most important works: Körper (2000) and noBody (2002). I was able to get great seats to see each show and was blown away by the beauty, imagination and pure physicality on display in these productions, featuring a company of almost 25 international dancers (mostly the original casts). The production designs were stark, minimal yet opulent and bearing that price tag I’ve come to expect from the Schaubühne. But frankly, I couldn’t be envious of the budgets when the results were flawless. Happy Anniversary, Frau Waltz.
1. Two scoops of “Guilty”
At about 2 a.m. my second to last evening in Berlin, Tony (see #6) and I were sitting in Luzia, our hangout in Kreuzberg, pleasantly buzzed and harmlessly belligerent, when Andi (one of the bartenders) reached into his bag and pulled out a CD. “This is just the thing,” he exclaimed— not in English—and the next thing we knew Barbra Streisand: Duets was blasting out of the speakers, to the dismay of all the customers except Tony and me. (I should probably say here that Luzia, a former butcher shop, is not a gay bar, although one bartender is a pre-op transwoman and another could be considered a reluctant drag queen. The crowd and staff come from all over Europe, some even from America.) Tony and I glanced at each other and, without as much as a wink, began singing along with Barbra and Barry at the top of our lungs. “Shadows falling, baby, we stand alone…” We both knew every single word of this Grammy Award-winning, Billboard Top 10 single, as the whole bar soon discovered. “And we got nothing…and we got nothing to be guilty of, our love…” As soon as the song was over, there was a stunned silence in the bar and someone exiting, a Brit I think, whispered to me, with a mixture of admiration, horror and disgust: “I will never hear that song the same way again in my life.”
Ten minutes later, after several uninspiring tracks played at dismally low volume, Tony and I suggested (I don’t think we threw things) that they revisit “Guilty.” And we did it again, intoning every glorious lyric. “Don’t wanna hear your goodbye…” Shortly afterward, the bar closed for the evening. I’m told that their liquor license was not revoked. Somewhere in there is a metaphor for those fun-filled weeks—and probably for my entire life—in the German capital.
