Photo: Götz von Vogelstein
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February 01, 2021
Best-of-Stream of “Das süße Despair” at the Theater der Keller – Theater am Rhein 02/21
“I do my interviews with five words: death, despair, suicide, failure, fear”, so pathetically formulated André Müller, who in the 1970s and 1980s was something like the god of the columnist confessional, his journalistic credo. Under the title “The sweet despair”, the young director Emanuel Tandler has processed the interviews from Müller available on the Internet into a theater evening that first catches up on what Müller revealed in his interviews in a rather claused manner: He talks about himself, his origin, his childhood without a biological father, vulgo his narcissism.
Müller exposes himself and couldn’t be more dressed: Matthias Lühn, Melanie Lüninghöner, Philipp Sebastian, Susanne Seuffert wear uniform beige-gray suits as social armor. Bales of grass, showcase with little trees, birds and violin, piano and refrigerator suggest a setting between exhibition, bourgeoisie and everyday life. The quartet sometimes speaks in a choir, wriggles like marionettes, gets entangled in the tapes of an audio cassette, gives lectures. In between, Tandler and video director Sandra Riedmair have an interview with Alice Schwarzer (played by Laura Sundermann) that is re-enacted at the table and resembles an absurd duel rather than a conversation.
The 30-minute best-of of the evening streamed at the premiere gives a first impression of the staging. Even if the selected scenes initially reveal a lot of scenic convention, the absurd joke in particular makes you want to see the stage version.
The sweet despair | R: Emanuel Tandler | Dates after announcement | Theater of the cellars | 0221 31 80 59
HANS-CHRISTOPH ZIMMERMANN
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