My overall impression
This show is tremendous. It is very clear that the team has a rich understanding of the themes and symbols in the text, and they make them manifest in their staging and design, which are incredibly intricate. The play makes excellent use of contrast: Melchior’s enormous physicality against Moritz’s stillness, the grotesqueness of the adults in the first two acts, against their delicate, intimate, and connected scenes in the third act, Moritz’s fast and unwavering tempo against everyone else’s variations. All of these elements sharpen each other and facilitate a much deeper understanding of what is clearly a difficult text. The show makes use of images that are sometimes visceral and sometimes intellectual. And while the play may be about the tension between these two ideas, the overall performance makes use of them in such a way that they only complement each other, making us sometimes feel, sometimes think.
Though sometimes a tad illustrative, the staging is dynamic, and sometimes quite immediate and shocking (in a very good way). The ensemble of nine does an excellent job of supporting one another through complex language, staging, and situations, and though the performances are not always 100%, the ensemble is clearly filled with joy for the piece and one another and the play never loses its buoyancy. Go see this play.
