Theater review: “The Grapes of Wrath” at the Thalia Theater Hamburg – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Why not to bring in 2016 to more than 75-year-old novel “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck on the theater stage? Well, it is a history of migration, albeit a domestic American: The literary classic is about the fate of the twelve-member extended family Joad that how many hundreds of thousands of other flees in the Thirties, the time of the Great Depression to the allegedly promised land California. On their leased land in the “Dust Bowl” of Oklahoma is no longer living. So you are what today is called economic refugees. Steinbeck’s work was praised especially for his social realism, its exactly researched account of the circumstances at the time, of dirt and dust, the rickety truck on Route 66, the despair of the good dispossessed and the exploiters mentality of evil haves.

The director Luk Perceval has “Grapes of Wrath” now at the start of the International Lessing days as co-production with the NT Gent launched at Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre. The realism of the theater man drives this story thoroughly – in favor of a supposed universality and timelessness alleged. His reduced to six members Ensemble is an international club of the weary and heavy laden: Rafael Stachowiak is a native Pole, Marina Galic has a Bosnian Croat background, Mariia Shulga is Russian, Kristof van Boven Belgians (as the director), Nick Monu comes from Nigeria and Bert Luppes comes from the Netherlands. Most speak with an accent, sometimes in their native language. Galic says instead of “I” consistently “Ick” – a sign of solidarity with the Dutch people? Workers of the world, you agreed.

As Hull Joad family are these six go. through a barren no man’s land, the short a torn until the firewall black hole is at the stage designer Annette, covered only by a large tarp and autumn leaves For all time falling more leaves down from the sky stage. No entirely new, but always nice to seeing image for the offense of (life) time.

all under a blanket

The tarpaulin, a canvas tarp as aufspannten the “Okies” on their trek westward in front of their car, is the central element in this game deliberately barren Theater. It is the connection between the characters: If they sit exhausted in the evening side by side and stare at the audience, they put literally under a blanket; If you hold the tarp together and this race stomping in a circle, symbolizing the onward journey. Rolled up into a ball, the beige substance to the body of his grandfather, the on the grueling journey soon struck by lightning. And when the two women with the tarpaulin organize a sort of tug of war, which stands for the birth of a baby

This is a higher craftsmanship that -. Together with the golden light and the color very tastefully coordinated earth tones poor man’s coverings (costumes: Annelies Vanlaere) – can be for the whole misery folklore. The sad beautiful chants of Shulga and Monu (“Summertime … when the living is easy”) coming on top of it as an encore. They are apparently not meant as a cynical commentary, but to bear witness to the long-suffering of battered

Especially Marina Galic as mother Joad embodied as a good soul of the family in a gentle voice this impeccable perseverance and compulsive optimism. her husband, Nick Monu are, on the other hand allows precisely timed outbursts in which he must use his powerful muscles. For the relationship between the two Perceval interested here, however, not a bit.

For the central figure in his former itinerant preacher Casy (Bert Luppes), which is how Jesus dropped in the desert from the faith and the family joined on their way to the West. In Luppes Casy is a strange vain fellow who swaggers with zerbeultem top hat dutch cursing over the stage, sprained limbs, while “holy” ponders the word, without coming to a point.

Rafael Stachowiak as Uncle John is at Perceval a clown in too great trousers, the repeated hoarsely bad jokes that bares teeth and has to face so obtuse in its most extreme moments when he played a skit by Dieter Hallervorden after. Only no pathos seems to be the motto of the director.

But what then? Perceval is interested in little for the motives of the fugitives, not for the actual story. Only three scenes he keeps hold, and where it is in principle: It’s about the beginning and end of life. At length he shows the funeral of his grandfather (rituals replace the native soil), the grandmother’s (a bit more experienced, but in the Promised Land) and the birth of Roses child born dead to the world and thus the mantra of Mother Joad, “We do not die out, “calls into question: Dying in a foreign country as the epitome of homelessness.

The fact that a so little heart to go on this evening, you have to hold against the self? No, it is rather the failure of this production

“The Grapes of Wrath” :. Thalia Theater Hamburg, next performances on 24.1. and 5, 13, 23 and 25.2 .; Tel 040/32 81 44 44. www.thalia-theater.de