The night of the con men (by Tobias and Violeta)

Peter Handke is (still) a famous writer in Germany and Claus Peymann a well-known director and the current manager of the theatre BERLINER ENSEMBLE which has been founded by Bertolt Brecht in 1949 and which aims to keep his concept of theatre in good memory (see http://www.berliner-ensemble.de/). Both have in common that they like to act in public as the agent provocateur.
Peymann´s last coup some weeks ago, when Germany debated the discharge of the former RAF-terrorists, was the offering of a placement at the BERLINER ENSEMBLE to one of the prison inmates. In the theatre business he made a name of himself by promoting writers like Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek or the mentioned Peter Handke.
Handke celebrated his first triumph in 1966 with the play PUBLIKUMSBESCHIMPFUNG (staging: Claus Peymann) and from then on his texts have been regularly staged all-over Germany. In 1996 he published a travelogue with the phrase “Gerechtigkeit für Serbien” in its long title which caused a heated debate on belittlement of the Serbian war crimes. In 2004 he visited Slobodan Milosevic in prison and took a speech at his funeral in 2006. In reaction to that one of his plays was removed from the theatre-program in Paris...
Now these two old friends got together again for the debut performance of Handke´s recent play SPUREN DER VERIRRTEN at the BERLINER ENSEMBLE. We saw it yesterday.
In his marvellous prose text Handke comes up with a spectator who describes what he observes: reams of couples, single persons, or groups appearing in front of his eyes, acting out, exiting, exchanging a few words. Their topic is nothing less than the time, the human existence, the course of the world.
Also in the staging an actor appears at the beginning, takes place in the front row and follows what happens on the forward-tippled stage. The appearing people remind of fairy-tale-figures, characters of Handke´s former plays or mythology and an undefined character (“the third”) connects the scenes by his constant entries.
But what is carefully, ambitiously, poetically developed in Handke´s text becomes boring, flatulent, comedy-like (when it doesn´t fit) on stage. And at the latest when the ensemble starts to sing a couplet with the lyrics “Das waren noch Zeiten. Das war die Zeit” Peymann´s work turns into kitsch.
The marks, the actors leave on stage at the beginning (breadcrumbs, scraps of paper or metal piles) are all gone with the wind within minutes - like our impressions shortly after the ending of the performance!