Δ (alt-J) Review - Berlin Columbiahalle

When performing on stage, save for the strumming of strings, tapping of keys, and beating of drums, alt-J barely move. Their legs and arms are almost immobile, and due to the lights flashing behind them, any movement of their lips and eyes are hidden in shadow. When addressing the throng in front of them between tracks, they are brief and modest, seemingly unaffected by the crowd’s ecstasy. Indeed, one might deduce that they aren’t even enjoying themselves. This is All Yours is the name of their second album, and playing at Berlin’s Columbiahalle last month, it appear like alt-J are willingly but indifferently imparting a gift.

It is a gift ardently received.

Centre stage and just a step closer to its lip than his bandmates, lead-singer Joe Newman doesn’t have the classic appearance of a rock star ...

Read the full article at ADS Records. 

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2015

Gone Avery

On first listening to Gone Avery they reminded me a lot of Imagine Dragons. Their heavy use of guitar chords certainly makes them rocky, but like Imagine Dragons, heavy pop influences are evident in their songs in their lively melodies with an easy hook that makes for fun listening. The band is from L.A and they released their first EP, ‘Lost and Forgotten’, in 2012. Since they have built up a relatively enthused fan base and have played in a variety of top venues in California.

Imagine Dragons’ hit ‘Radioactive’ debuted as the credits rolled on the film Host, which was based on the book by Stephanie Meyer, better known for the Twilight series. The film Host lacks much of the darkness and the intrigue and the sophistication (yes, I said it!) that is evident in the Twilight films, which made Radioactive a perfect credit rolling song: upbeat, catchy, and one that is easy to jump up and down to without the fear of their becoming wrapped up in a mosh pit. In comparison, the Twilight films featured classics such as Muse’s ‘Super Massive Black Holes’ and Radiohead’s ‘15 Step’.

Though it sounds like I am digressing, this difference between the two Meyer film adaptations rose in my mind as I listened to Gone Avery’s first few tracks ...



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O Pioneers! in Ausland

At first look it appeared that Diane Cluck was an odd fixture for a place like Ausland. A bare small venue – very Berlin – in the heart of beautiful Prenzlauer Berg, Ausland is known for putting on kookie acts and sound-art exhibitions. Inside it might remind you of a small, protestant church, tall but narrow, the tabernacle at the back serving Berliner Pilsner. On Wednesday 7^th May it was hosting Diane Cluck who, as far as her reputation preceded her, did not seem very Berlin.

The place is non-commercially run and beyond just a venue (nothing worth its salt in Belin is ever just one thing) Ausland doubles as a workshop for artists. Beyond this it is a bar, and also puts on ilm screenings and talks. In better words than mine, Ausland’s mission statement reads: ‘The focus clearly is on experimental, non-mainstream, demanding, kind of weird stuff which either makes you comfortable or make you leave the place before you’ve even finished your first (cheap) drink ..’ Above anything else, the place is about, ‘consuming arts in its finest forms.’

In such company, on first appearance – and I admit, for me, this was – Cluck’s strain of folk music appears very normal, perhaps even a little dull ...



To read the complete article please visit ADS Records

To find more on Diane  - http://dianecluck.info/

Waiting for the Dawn: Alex Bay’s 'Daylight'

‘Nobody Like You’, the first song on Alex Bay’s EP Daylight, begins with a ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ in a gruff male voice, opening the record in a rock ‘n’ roll vein that isn’t sustained. Indeed, the rest of the EP, 5 songs in total, are more 90s mellow rock than Babyshambles or Kings of Leon. This is not a straight up criticism of Daylight, for with Bay’s lack of pretention and heaps of self-assuredness, at its most powerful the music is reminiscent of the best of Joseph Arthur or Eagle Eye Cherry, and needs not be rocky to be good.

Bay is from North Hertfordshire. This is his first EP and his voice sounds more mature than his 24 years. ‘Nobody Like You’ breaks earlier than you are expecting. A chorus of other voices rises behind Bay and it is very quickly great fun. Bay has a confidence in his own sound – even if at this point a listener isn’t completely sure what that is – which spurs on feet tapping and head nodding, if not banging. In addition to this, perhaps the first thing you notice is the quality of the sound production. The songs sound full-bodied and are as crisp as a bell. As Bay is still relatively young to the music industry, this level of production is impressive, and allows a listener to relax, confident that they are in the hands of someone who know what they are doing.

Woven in and out of the backing chorus in this song and some of the others, are the strings of a tragic violin, occasionally backed by two or three more ...



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Find Alex Bay on SoundCloud -  https://soundcloud.com/alexbaymusic/alex-bay-daylight/recommended

Don’t Forget the Mirror: 'Schwarz Gemacht' at the English Theatre Berlin

In the beginning it is like a fairy tale with the tinkling of a piano and projected curtains opening over the back wall of the stage. The stage is empty save for a lone man pacing under two square frames that tower at sharp angles above him. These robotic limbs are lined with newspapers, and stacks of the same prop up the stage that slopes down to the right as you look at it.

A woman’s voice begins to narrate the Geshichte von den schwarzen Buben, or The Story of the Inky Boys, a poem for children by Heinrich Hoffmann. The poem comes from the book Der Struwwelpeter (1845) which comprises of ten poetic cautionary tales for and about infants, opening a bedroom door to reveal through the crack a hideous and bizarre adult world full of terrors ready to punish misbehaviour.

Klaus (played by Ernest Allan Hausmann) translates the poem into English, telling of Ludwig and Kaspar and Willhelm who, armed with flags and wearing trim jackets, tease a ‘woolly-headed black-a-moor’. After the poem Klaus dives upon a pile of newspapers in the centre of the stage and begins reading the stories frantically.

This is 1930s Berlin, and Klaus is following developments closely. Throughout the production he returns to these newspapers, standing in them, sleeping in them, diving into these stories for any sign of approaching danger or anything that would threaten his identity as a German.   

And this is Schwarz Gemacht, an original play by New Yorker Alexander Thomas, playing at the English Theatre Berlin (ETB) this month. Through the character of Klaus, Thomas tells the story of an Afrodeutscher, angry and withdrawn and desperately seeking a role to play in his beloved homeland. Haussman plays Klaus with a restrained fury, stiff and prickly, hiding the rage that would reveal his acknowledgement of himself as ‘other.’  That rage surfaces only a couple of times, but when it does is raw and wretched. Thomas has the woman’s voice from the beginning return throughout the production as Klaus’s mother, soothing and comforting, and instructing her son to ‘grow and be a good little German boy.’ With a pitiful poignancy Klaus translates his mother’s words as if repeating a mantra: ‘Ich bin Deutcher. Ich bin Deutscher’. Reading everything but the truth in the newspapers, Klaus refuses to see the warnings around him as National Socialism tightens its grip on the country, holding onto his precarious identity as a German with the tenacity of a terrified child clinging to his mother’s dress.

The story of the Afrodeutscher in the 1930s is not one that is commonly told and therefore Thomas had a challenge to get the audience up to speed without losing dramatic pace. Thomas accomplished this through the character of Lisa, played by Miriam Anna Schroetter. Lisa is a young woman from the States, guest in the house of her Berliner cousin Ruth (Kerstin Schweers), Ruth’s husband Walter (Marco Klammer), and Klaus, who occupies a blurred role in the house between friend, colleague and servant. Not only does Lisa enable Thomas to teach the audience the history of blacks in Germany, but also enables the play to be spoken almost entirely in English. Thomas’s careful construction of Lisa and his deft creation of the scenes in die Pension which weave in and out of the two languages, means that at no point does the play feel diluted or cumbersome in its means to be accessible for any ignorant and solely-English speaking members of the audience.

Rather than just structural devices Lisa and her hosts reflect the same confused identity in relation to their heimat as is seen in Klaus. ‘I was born in America,’ Lisa says. ‘But actually I am German.’ While she attempts to discover her heritage, Walter, one-time successful film director now reluctant accomplice in the production of Goebbels’s propaganda films, mocks his country with a black humour that fails to mask disgust, and cuts off Lisa’s elementary German saying that he prefers English. Ruth, meanwhile, is too nervous to even leave the flat.

Schroetter is as sweet and bright as she is patronizing and irritating. By tiptoeing on the precipice of exaggeration, Schroetter enables the petite Lisa to embody the sweeping force of America on stage. Only Klammer damages these scenes. His Walter at times becomes unbelievable as he overplays comic lines and slips into pantomime. It is an old actors’ line that to ‘play drunk’ you must try very hard to act sober. Klammer is merely pretending to be very drunk, and you are aware of it throughout.

This weakens the scenes in die Pension but not fatally. Director Daniel Brunel (artistic director of the ETB) has the four characters each standing under the jagged frames at the corners of the stage throughout these scenes. Klaus refuses to approach the drunken Walter despite his requests, who therefore resorts to throwing things at Klaus, his much sought-after Arbeitsbuch, for instance, or an empty flask of drink. Ruth will talk of past tenderness but scream at Klaus from across the stage and restrain Lisa from approaching him. For her part, Lisa draws Klaus to her when they are alone but only before a mutual modesty and submission to social conditions pull them apart again.  

Thomas raises the foreboding shadow of National Socialism off-stage with the occasional knock on the door from the local community watchman. It is not a knock we hear but a sharp chord on the piano, freezing the characters as if playing a game of musical statues. There is an element of the ridiculous in this as the four appear like children, hiding from one of the monsters of Der Struwwelpeter. It is these unseen dangers that threaten what Klaus calls Gemütlichkeit, the comfort, peace and love that he finds in his home country. It is not in fairy tales that Klaus watches for these monsters, put in the stacks of newspaper stories that Ruth feeds him with, telling him that he must be prepared.

Apart from Lisa’s naïve sunniness, the only other warmth in the play comes from old Maurice (Sadiq Bey), an African American playing (verboten) jazz in the city. Maurice, though adrift from and sceptical of his country, like Lisa exhibits its stereotypical traits. A mad-cat pursuit of freedom, friendliness, jokes in riddling banter, and the carefree attempts at a foreign language. Like Schroetter’s Lisa, Bey’s performance is beautifully poised on the cusp of cliché. Maurice exuberates a mellow and confident attitude towards himself and the world about him, detached, but never cold. When confronted with American racism by Klaus, Maurice responds, languidly, ‘My country is scheiße. But yours is scheiße too. And getting more scheiße everyday.’  

The harder Maurice tries to get Klaus to see his reflection in his own black face, the harder Klaus grips to his identity as a German. ‘Du bist Andere!’ Klaus screams at Maurice. ‘Ich bin Keiner!’ In Klaus’ quest to become a contributing member of German society, Thomas constructs the ironic scenario whereby Klaus ‘blacks up’ to act an African in one of Goebbels’s propaganda films. Thomas shows that it is from the State and in the newspapers that Klaus looks for instruction on how to be, on how to construct an identity imbedded in German society.

In Hoffman’s Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben, Ludwig, Kaspar and Wilhelm experience a hubris that isn’t to come to the Nazis in this play. As punishment for ‘laughing’ and ‘hooting’ at the moor, the ‘naughty boys’ are scooped up by ‘Saint Nicholas’ and thrown into his ‘mighty inkstand.’ In this story, as in the other tales, it isn’t the moor or Saint Nicholas or the inkstand, but the dark tendencies within the children themselves that are warned against. In Schwarz Gemacht, it is in this direction that Thomas directs our gaze.

Towards the end of the play Klaus relates a memory he has of playing upstairs in his grandmother’s attic. He remembers hiding from his ‘monster’ that was represented by a piece of furniture under a sheet in the centre of the room. When he eventually builds up the courage to confront his nemesis, Klaus rips of the sheet and is greeted by his own reflection in a great oak wood mirror. As with Ludwig, Kaspar and Wilhelm, as with Lisa and as with us, it should not be through the black and white columns of our country that we construct our identity, but by looking at ourselves.  

As Maurice says to Klaus, ‘You’ve gotta see yourself sometime.’  

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2014

English Theatre Berlin - http://www.etberlin.de/

Songs of Roland: Roland Satterwhite at the English Theatre Berlin

Even in Berlin the theatre can be more restraining than liberating. The audience are quiet and compelled to respect the sanctity of the place. There is polite applause, and no raucous bawling. Therefore when a gig is performed in a theatre its nature is consequently altered. There is clapping, and perhaps appreciative cheering, but only minimal whooping and all bottle flinging is held in check. Everyone is nervous of jiggling legs knocking over glasses of white wine schorle and after half the set list all are shuffling to relieve numb butt cheeks. More London Symphony Orchestra than Southbank bear pits.

For the performer however, playing in a theatre can go either way; they may, like the audience, restrain themselves in awe under the proscenium arch, or they can find liberation on stage and a licence to perform a new role. The latter appeared the case for Roland Saterwhite who on February 14^th played his first concert in a Berlin theatre at English Theatre Berlin. As well as being a musician, Roland practices free improvisation, and therefore it was perhaps expected that this wouldn’t take the form of a regular concert.

However at first, emerging amongst a half constructed set, caught in the lights Roland appeared like he was indeed scared of the stage. He crept ... 



To read the complete article please visit ADS Records

Roland Satterwhite - http://www.benedekrecords.com/

Django Lassi - http://www.djangolassi.com/

ETB - http://www.etberlin.de/

Organic Dance, Recycled Sound: Pick a Piper at Fluxbao

The room was smoky, and filling up. There was condensation on the window that looked out to Warschauer Strasse, enveloped in the fog that had descended upon Berlin. Inside the club - that magical place we hear about in the charts, where anything can happen and we put our hands in the air - the crowd wait for Pick a Piper.

This club was Fluxbao, near Schlesisches Tor in Berlin. It was the beginning of December and no-one was sure at what time the ban were to start. It didn’t appear to say anywhere. But at some point after 9 o’clock the three-piece from Canada appeared from the shadows and onto the stage to whoops and claps and a slight ripple of bodies forward. They begin with a loud clash and in moments the beat of the drums and synth chords had taken possession of the club.

But they were called to an abrupt stop only a few moments later, as with a scratching hiss one of the speakers blew and the last remnants of the introductory song trailed off ...



To read the complete article please visit ADS Records

            Pick a Piper - https://soundcloud.com/pickapiper

'White Rabbit Red Rabbit' at the English Theatre Berlin

White Rabbit Red Rabbit, by Iranian writer Nassim Soleimanpou, challenges us to evaluate the extent of our autonomy and examine the role we play in the world. Soleimnanpou achieves this by turning the mechanisms of theatre in upon themselves:  there is never a director, there are no rehearsals, and a different actor takes the lone role every night. The stage is the same each time: a chair, a ladder, two glasses of water, a vial, and, in a sealed envelope, the script.

In the case of the English Theatre Berlin, where White Rabbit Red Rabbit played for four nights in November, the script was brought on stage by the artistic director, and handed with quivering fingers to that night’s actor, both smiling gleefully. The artistic director introduced the actor and says, ‘I will leave you in his hands …’ and shuffles backwards into the wings.  

The theatre is still with excitement. The forth wall is broken as the actor cheerily introduces himself to us in his own, improvised words, diffusing any awkwardness as he fiddles with the envelope, attempting to extract the script. He tells us he is nervous. He finally manages to open the envelope, takes out the script, and begins.

Of course we are not really in our actor’s hands at all. We are all in the hands of Soleimanpou. There is an empty seat in the front row reserved for him. It is he who is to guide us blindly through the evening, and it is he that addresses us directly when our actor beings to speak.   

As a conscientious objector Soleimanpou is unable to leave Iran and is currently writing this play in his garden, so he tells us, which is fucking hard. Where are you? This play is his way of travelling out of Iran. The idea of the play came from a dream he had of committing suicide on stage, and tonight, he tells us, it is the onstage suicide of our actor, that we may bear witness to. Dear actor, you didn’t know what you were letting yourself in for …

Our actor makes comical aghast expression and the audience laugh and he continues to read.

He paces up and down the stage as Soleimnapou tell us more about himself and his motives for writing this play, our actor dropping each white, double-spaced page to the floor as he goes. Soleimanpou tells our actor to give each member of the audience a number, and then call No. 9 up on to the stage.  No. 9, a blonde girl of about that many years, happens to be our actor’s daughter.  We are told that the vial on the table contains poison, and are all, save for father and daughter, under Soleimanpou’s direction, requested to close our eyes while the latter pours the contents of that vial into one of the glasses of water.

At the end of the night the actor will have to choose one of those glasses to drink from. They are left to stand on the table behind him.

Amongst chuckles and cooing his daughter returns to her seat and the evening continues. More audience members are invited up on stage, white rabbits who must hide their ears, and bears that ensure that they do. No. 23 is a wonderfully meek white rabbit, and No. 41 a suitable stern bear and under our actor’s direction we follow them into Soleimanpou’s circus where there are leopards pretending to be ostriches and ostriches pretending to be leopards, and bears who have fallen on to the stage and so pretend to be leopards pretending to be ostriches, so not to upset the play.

And then the ladder is brought to centre stage and more numbers are called out, and more members of the audience called up. They are all white rabbits, and when our actor fires the starting gun four of them shuffle and smile sheepishly around the ladder, while one leaps up to the top to grab the prize, and there is both supportive laughter and distrustful applause at such boldness.

Soleimanpou is telling us about his uncle. And he continue this process until all the rabbits in the cage were new. They continue to attack each rabbit that ascended the ladder, even though not one of them knew the reason why they did it, other than ‘that is what is done here’.

An iPhone is summoned and a picture is taken of our four white rabbits and one red rabbit standing next to our actor and Soleimanpou asks that it be sent to him. I would love to see you all.

The members of the audience return to their seats but the ladder remains on stage and under it the table with the two glasses of water. Soleimanpou regularly brings out attention back to the ominous pair, but our actor is no methodist and so rolls his eyes whenever suicide is spoken of. It’s only a play after all. Suicide? Ha!  

It’s only a play after all.

Just a play? Soleimanpou challenges us.  But what if, what if … People don’t really die in plays, we know this. Yet each time our actor is addresses as ‘Dear actor’ and we are addressed as ‘Dear audience’, and we see another page of script fall to the ground, this becomes less of a play. Each time the suspension of disbelief is broken, the possibility of ‘what if’ blooms in front of us once more. For if this isn’t a play, what exactly is it? And what exactly are we doing here? What if there is poison in the vial? What if the daughter does hold a grudge? What if there was a great conspiracy? What if this isn’t just a play?

Ah! but come now, it is just a play! And the actor must diligently play his role, read his lines, until we leave the theatre at the end of the evening. That is how this works. What is left of our actor if he is not to act?

And yet, likewise, if we too play out part and deign to believe, we are to witness a suicide tonight. And if we decide not to believe, we decide not to care, and we leave our actor and the empty glass, and the shadow of the theatre hangs over us.

Night is closing in, and the excitement we can hear in Soleimanpou’s voice tells us that the moment when the actor must choose which glass to drink is approaching. He tells our actor to put the pages of the script down. Who will take them up? Who will finish the play? Who is our red rabbit? There is silence in the auditorium, and it is still once more. Our actor has no more lines to read and so cannot dispel the tension. The script lies on the floor and we wait for someone to pick it up.

Why would anyone dare put their neck out? Why, when so much comfort is gained by settling into the crowd? Why when we simply want to fit, and to belong? To rest in peace with hearthside contentment? I will sit still. I will not make a fuss. I will excuse, and qualify, and maybe, if there is no hope, say, ‘Well then, next time …’  

So the two glasses are placed in front of us as well. We have two options. Firstly, though ignoble, and selfish, and cowardly, we are offered a way out, if things were ever to get too bad. A way to pull the curtain cord, announce the end, drop our script and end the treadmill of suffering.  Secondly, we could try and save the actor? We could storm the stage. We could tear the script, and break the vial, knock over the glasses and with rabid eyes and bared teeth destroy the theatre. We could smash up the empty, reserved seat, while the frantic artistic director hops about in the wings: ‘Naturalism! Next season, only naturalism!’

But this will never happen. The artistic director will return in comfort to the lobby, and take a drink with the actor, two glasses in front of them, and his daughters and partner. We will leave the stage, and return to the world. But White Rabbit Red Rabbit will not leave us. For if the world truly is a stage, and we merely players, then all the world’s a cage.

And the script sits on the floor of the theatre and we wait for someone to pick it up.

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2013

Begin again, and again: Phia at the English Theatre Berlin

She is often referred to around the lines of, ‘that girl with that funny instrument who does the looping thing’ and this was the accumulation of my knowledge on Phia as I went to see her this October at the English Theatre Berlin. Shuffling within the bustling crowd that was fidgeting to see the final show of her tour, at first no-one I spoke to was particularly sure what the instrument she played was. ‘A mobiro,’ someone eventually said, nonchalantly. ‘From South Africa’. This created a momentary flutter of excitement in our corner of the lobby, and a little scepticism too. ‘It certainly doesn’t sound very African to me,’ someone said.

Amidst the wires and mics and lights, as Phia begins her set I crane my neck forward to get a better look at the thing in her hand that she introduces as not a ‘mobiro’ but a ‘kalimba’, a thumb-piano, a descendant of the South African ‘mbira’.  The kalimba, with the dexterity of the cell phone generation, can be played with just one hand by plucking at the mettle strips that run across the wooden tablet, creating a sound like a xylophone or a little bell; but the sound is cleaner than a bell, and has more body than a xylophone. With her loop pedal, Phia records a melody with the kalimba, or a beat made with her mouth or hands, or sings an introductory refrain, and plays it back, allowing it to loop again, and again, throughout her song, as she adds layer upon layer, created with her hands, or mouth, or the kalimba. Phia isn’t the only one to use a loop pedal, or indeed to play a kalimba, but she’s one of few to use them together, and it is this unusual aspect to her music that brought many of us to the English Theatre Berlin that evening.

In her songs Phia expresses the relationship she has with ‘home’, which was Melbourne for her until she moved to Berlin – ‘this village’ – two years ago. As Lily Allen presented her home in ‘LDN’ with crack-whores and Tesco bags ...



To read the complete article please visit ADS Records

http://listentophia.com/

http://mezmedallion.com/

http://www.etberlin.de/

'Echter Berliner !!!! Ihr Nicht Fuck You' at the English Theatre Berlin

Before it was filled with dawdling tourists bending their heads back to look up at the Fernsehturm, and before the U-bahn station and Döblin’s nightlife, and before the enterprising Jews from the eastern marshes arrived and occupied the ‘Scheunenviertel’, what is now Alexanderplatz, home of the World Clock, was a cattle market where outsiders would come to trade their stock and try to make a living. Since the Friesians, still cheap and with space to fill, Berlin has continued to thrive as a ‘Welstadt’, welcoming the rest of the world to its streets, from desperate refugees to the pleasure-seeking wealthy. Kreuzberg over the last twenty-five years has received the king’s portion of this influx, and it is in this kebab and hostel saturated district that a wall can be found sporting the words: ‘Echter Berliner!!!! Ihr Nicht Fuck You’.

It is from this piece of graffiti that Daniel Brunet found the title and inspiration for his piece of documentary theatre staged this month at the English Theatre Berlin, part of the ‘Aliens of Extraordinary Abilities?’ project. Considering what makes a real Berliner, Brunet and the other five in his cast – all from an ‘expat’ or ‘immigrant’ community – interviewed ten people from that respective community, exploring the shared and differing experiencing of moving to and living in Berlin. Together they collected over 115, 000 words, and it is from these testaments, performed on stage verbatim, that Brunet and his cast devised their piece of theatre, asking, what makes and who is an ‘Echter Berliner’?

Brunet commences his production at the Ausländerbehörde, the bureaucracy centre for all foreigners in the city, provoking sensations ranging from tedium to fear. Upon arrival each member of the audience is given a coloured ticket dependent on their country of origin and are curtly informed that ‘There is likely to be a delay in the commencement of the performance this evening’. Indeed, it is not until fifteen minutes after the stated starting time that the first group of coloured ticket holders are lead into the theatre. The mass of Germans, clutching red tickets in their palms, are led into the auditorium last.

Inside we see a sad looking character in Jewish garb, sitting morosely on a stall and rummaging through a plastic rucksack, looking like the lost boy on a school trip. When the play begins, he is joined on stage by the other five actors, including Brunet looking suitably American in baseball hat and aviators, one actress in traditional East Asian wear and another in a Muslim shawl. Each clearly represents not simply a culture, but the stereotype that is cast upon individuals from that culture; that which Brunet is attempting to wrench open. Yet such stereotypes are continually presented on stage to comic effect throughout the evening, whether it is the Turk laying out his tea-set with painstaking care or the proud Yorkshireman with the plumy voice. Because of this, Brunet runs the risk of reinforcing these stereotypes as opposed to breaking them down.

The play continues with irritable accounts of the staff in Starbucks refusing to respond in German, or being constantly asked, ‘No but seriously, where are you really from?’, refracted and repeated by from varying perspectives. It soon becomes apparent that the only thing to be comprehensively broken down and explored is the set. This is principally six wooden frames with paper screens, that are re-arranged, dismantled, toppled, walked through and twisted throughout the evening, representing booths, and doorways, and ironing boards, eventually all brought to the floor and ripped into their component parts. In deconstructing these barriers and boundaries Brunet shows the liberation - or wasteland - that will emerge when stereotypes and assumed differences are offered the same treatment. However by constantly tampering with the set he stalls any pace that the piece may hope to accumulate, and instead of intrigue and insight the audience is offered tedium and weariness. More effort should have been spent on stretching and exploring the question of what makes a real Berliner, achieved through a more nuanced engagement with the interviews and the theatrical versatility of the actors, who in comparison to the six wooden frames come across static. At times it appears that we are simply watching a group of friends gossiping about their travails as they embark on a communal evening of DIY. We are offered brief moments of excitement when a door frame occasionally falls down.

At one point in the production the six sit around a table and push a camera into each other’s faces while they are speaking. This is projected on to the stage, showing a dark and patchy picture of disorientated faces, like an amateur and intimidating interrogation video. This effect is unnerving, particularly when one of the actress recounts being confronted by neo-Nazis screaming ‘Auslander Aus!’ However this section at the table is also stretched out until it loses all drama. When a few muted clips of some of the real life interviews are shown, I wondered whether anything had been gained by presenting these stories in the theatre, and if simply an edited version of the research would have been more powerful.

At the end of the play the cast leave the stage chattering away to each other and one wishes that the audience had as much to chew upon when walking out of the theatre. It appears that the hard work of Brunet and his actors was spent in the conception and embryotic development of the play and not in its deployment. Sixty fingers wriggled into the colour and diversity of Berlin, and when put together on stage, glopped into a bland grey of generic urbanity and common complaints. An interesting result to consider in itself, but not, I believe, the intention of ‘Echter Berliner.’  

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2013