Madness with grace: Residenztheater shows Achternbusch's "The Boot and His Socks"

Created: 2022-11-14 2:19 p.m

"The Boot and His Socks" in the Marstall with Sibylle Canonica and Max Mayer.

© Adrienne Meister/Bavarian State Theater

Herbert Achternbusch's "The Boot and His Socks" premiered in 1993 at the Munich Kammerspiele.

Now the Bayerische Staatsschauspiel is showing its new production of the grotesque in the Marstall.

First of all nothing happens.

When the performance starts, it stays dark and quiet in the Munich Marstall.

for minutes.

Only the technology sometimes hums and cracks quietly.

Only when the eye has gradually got used to the darkness does one think that one can vaguely recognize a black outline on the stage.

is there who

And indeed, after what feels like an eternity, a match is lit and a candle is lit.

Yes, there is a person on the stage.

Ecce homo!

You still can't see much, but the person with the candle slowly moves to the left, and suddenly there's a second head, very close to the first one.

Now it's becoming clearer, it's two people, close together, as if they were wearing a coat together.

Or are they Siamese twins whose bodies have grown together?

Herbert Achternbusch's "The Boot and His Socks" premiered in 1993

In any case, it is the most beautiful and most successful picture that you get to see in this production of Herbert Achternbusch's "The Boot and His Socks".

Although it is not so long ago that the author, who died in January this year, staged the premiere of this grotesque himself at the Kammerspiele in 1993, that is now almost 30 years ago.

Which in turn sounds so grotesque and unbelievable that, as a more sedate theatergoer, one is completely blown away.

On the other hand, hardly anyone is likely to drop their slippers or boots with enthusiasm about a new production that stops halfway in the exciting attempt to tease a garish fool farce out of Achternbusch's offbeat love story.

Jan Höft staged the grotesque for the royal stables of the Residenztheater

The latter is really in this story about Herbert and Fanny, who live in Arizona in the middle of Bavaria and have a chicken.

It remains to be seen whether the delicate wooden construction with fabric walls built by stage designer Jonas Vogt looks like the noble Japanese Zen version of a chicken coop.

In any case, the hen no longer lays eggs, which is why Fanny has to lay eggs herself, while the hen might be slaughtered and Herbert wears a hat for safety reasons because an old teapot is hanging over his head - and a Roman legionnaire is breaking stones in the forest.

"The Boot and His Socks" is a kind of Dadaist anti-ballet

So far, so good, and even the fact that the Art Brut poetry typical of Achternbusch, which in the original text repeatedly flashes out of the linguistic rubble, fades due to many text cuts, one could let a determined director's approach get away with it.

But only if, in return, he opens up new, undreamt-of dimensions of the piece.

Unfortunately, this is only partially successful here.

One notices that the up-and-coming director Jan Höft was aiming for pure nonsense, for the conscious destruction of meaning, which was to find its clear, almost dance-like expression not only in words, but also in the body language of the actors.

A Dadaist anti-ballet, so to speak, which allows fragile grace to grow out of awkward gestures.

However, only one of the three actors seems to have followed the director in this effort: Max Mayer in the role of Herbert is ready not simply to skilfully downplay the usual boot, but to head off into other aesthetic realms.

This rickety comedian in a chimney sweep's outfit twitches and springs, hops and gropes around in a neurotically twisted manner, so that his magnificent stuttering of movements and body stammering make the whole madness felt in the flesh that the text articulates.

The two veteran theater heroes Sibylle Canonica (Fanny) and Arnulf Schumacher (Römer), on the other hand, cannot or do not want to keep up and act as noble as if they were playing a Dieter Dorn production.

There is something really impressive about

when the Canonica is wheeled around in a wheelbarrow with a tangled bonnet on her head, but radiating the dignity of a Mary Stuart.

Until it suddenly gets dark again and the audience politely applauds.

(More theater from the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel? Read our premiere review of “Waiting for Platonow” by Thom Luz here.)

Alexander Altman