Grime – for connoisseurs, onomatopoeic GRM – is a British hip-hop variant that does not fear the horrors of the future, but rather anticipates them. Motto: If you don’t expect much, you won’t be disappointed. Since the beginning of the millennium, the beats of this music have been banging like hard rubber bullets through suburban pedestrian zones, where the youngest generation of those who have been sorted out meets. As rappers, they can complain loudly, verbally protest, even threaten the apocalypse. Fast, hard and accurate. Lowered bass flutters like a power station on the verge of collapse. And every now and then a miracle happens, and someone from the scene becomes a pop star, like Stormzy.
Everything is unconditional
For Sibylle Berg, grime is the “greatest musical revolution since punk”. In her 2019 published Dystopia GRM Brainfuck the author uses the mood and attitude of the genre not only to tell the story of a group of young people, but also to list everything that has gone wrong in the world for decades: surveillance through social media, post-truth society, economization of all areas of life, racism, Inequality and the unrestrained exploitation of the planet. A brilliant suada of indignation, a remix of all the horrors of the capitalist Anthropocene, harsh and to the point, like the lyrics by Skepta, Flowdan and Wiley.
But such an escalating dystopia can be broken down to the length of a “so-called musical” and served in the Hamburg Thalia Theater to an audience whose worldview is mainly through reading Time and Hamburger Abendblatt is shaped? After all: Sibylle Berg is responsible for the theatrical version and director Sebastian Nübling did Kevin Rittberger’s Antifa play in the Gorki Theater last year Black block consistently brought radically to the stage. Chances are that nerds might not save the world tonight, but at least create better awareness.
In the center of the Thalia stage, a colorful, flickering advertising display rotates four meters above the ground. Including a couple of sagging couches – and a lot of black emptiness. “You’re In” shines from the mega-screen, against a background of pale pink cherry blossoms and a bright blue sky, and a completely virtual-looking couple (Gabriela Maria Schmeide and Tim Porath) report with a long, euphoric grin of a brave new world. There is talk of an unconditional basic income that everyone receives who unconditionally discloses their data. Additional money can be made with social points that are available for good behavior and denunciation. From high above, the two laughers rave about a future whose icy shadows have long since reached us.
In the twilight under the screen, a group of young people now enter the stage. They turn, stretch and spread, are completely bodies in contrast to the pixel duo above them. They mostly speak with one voice, as a choir, only from time to time they interrupt each other or complement each other, like rappers. But because the young actors not only lack individual corners and edges, but also the necessary flow, that often sounds awkward. Only once, when they film themselves with their mobile devices and stream the images live on the large screen, the characters become recognizable and literally glow. It is a shame that this electrifying liveliness of the people is otherwise hardly noticeable.
It gets downright stupid when the two flitz beeps from the screen suddenly walk across the stage with VR glasses because they want to virtually experience their nine-to-five jobs that have been rationalized away. The kids stand around them, exaggeratedly irritated, downright trembling. They see in the superfluous the new philistines, whose identity was shaped by a job that they no longer need, but apparently miss. An interesting aspect, given KI et cetera, which is given away as it is.
“It is inconceivable that there could be something like an uprising here,” says one. After all, the kids are hacking the display, which is broadcasting the stream of images of the brave new world. Which unfortunately doesn’t work, but the staging has a different focus anyway: “We had found each other and with it the place that resembled a cave that was always with us, transportable. We recognized each other. As an outsider, as a marginalized group phenomenon GRM Brainfuck one in the canon of outsider ballads that sound out the possibilities of an island or hope for romantic redemption, if necessary in the hail of bullets from the cops. For 100 minutes, Berg and Nübling let their heroes fidget, dance and declaim together – without anything moving. There are simply too many topics that are touched on here. A flood of displeasure sweeps over the audience.
The music from the Ruff Sqwad Arts Foundation works best. Behind this is a self-help organization to promote young talent, initiated in 2017 by the crime rappers Prince Owusu-Agyekum (alias Rapid) and Ebenezer Ayerh (alias Slix). Blessed with the wisdom of authentic streets, these pieces twist and turn in full self-confidence, show a physicality that the staging lacks over long stretches – despite all the dancing efforts of the actors, some of whom are quite impressive. The staging of GRM Brainfuck unfortunately remains far behind the book. And in the end there are school classes.
GRM Brainfuck. The so-called musical by Sibylle Berg Sebastian Nübling (Director), Thalia Theater, Hamburg
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