“Stranger than the Moon” at the Berliner Ensemble: Bertolt Brecht Superstar

2023-08-29 11:09:25

Bertolt Brecht brings with him a difficult legacy. Alone the mountains of prejudices that have accumulated around the great poet and theater innovator as well as every classic: Brecht, the strict high school teacher! The gray and joyless! The Berliner Ensemble now shows a completely different picture at its old place of work. The recital “Stranger than the Moon” brings Brecht to the stage as pop – with many nuances. It is a start to the new season that inspires.

To come straight to the point: the biggest event of the evening is Katharine Mehrling. Where to start and where to end the hymn of praise? Mehrling manages to give Brecht’s songs a sound that hasn’t existed since Gisela May: rough and tender, melodic and changing back to speaking, simply inimitable. With Edith Piaf and Kurt Weill, Mehrling has become a star at the Komische Oper and with solo recitals, now she is at her feet at the Berliner Ensemble. You can’t help it.

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However, there is also a problem: Mehrling is so good that Paul Herwig pales in comparison to her. Luckily, that didn’t detract from the evening. Herwig also has his big moments. He sings the “united front song” in such a way that the rhythm first finds itself, hesitantly at first, then gaining more and more self-confidence and finally suddenly breaking off. In this alone one can – without too much imagination – see an image of the history of the German workers’ movement, which is reflected in this song – up to the setting by the spontaneous band “Ton Steine ​​Scherben” around Rio Reiser.

shudder and realization

But Herwig occasionally wears a little too much. In “A Horse Accuses,” a horse reports being torn alive by hungry people. “Then I asked myself: What a cold / Must have come over the people!” It continues. “So help them! And do it soon! / Otherwise something will happen to you that you don’t think is possible!” A horse that has such thoughts does not have to be portrayed with snorting and stamping, which obscures the view of the metaphorical and clouds the clarity of the presentation. Against the enchanting lightness of Mehrling, Herwig seems like the floor gymnast next to the trapeze artist.

Just as the multiple whirls, understands – or should one say: feels? – one that Brecht’s songs can pass as pop songs, but ones that do not do without sophistication. Above all, it is the dialectic capers and sudden moments of change that create musical tension. A highlight of this art is how Mehrling in a lush dress with empty sparkling wine bottles around him performs “The Song of the Woman of the Nazi Soldier”. The woman on the home front grows self-drunk with each gift sent to her from the distant raids, before her face and voice go awry with the final gift – the widow’s veil. The accompanying music falls silent and the icy loneliness of the a cappella sends shivers down your skin, at the same time as political realization hits your brain.

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Brecht needed composers for his dialectic small caliber, which he also used in many of his pieces. He found them above all with Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau and Kurt Weill, who also composed most of the music in “Fremder als der Mond” – numerically in that order. Brecht worked together with Eisler, who was studying with Arnold Schönberg in Vienna, for decades, culminating in monumental works such as “The Measure”. But Eisler also mastered the small form, although many of his songs are less well known than Weill’s songs from The Threepenny Opera. With one exception, she is left out this evening. Those who want to hear more can see the complete “The Threepenny Opera” directed by Barrie Kosky at the Berliner Ensemble.

And there are songs that you have never heard before because they were composed for this evening. They come from Adam Benzwi, who, as musical director, is also responsible for the clear line of the instrumental accompaniment, which is impregnated against any kind of kitsch. “About the Seduction of Angels” is the name of a poem that Benzwi set to music. It shows another Brecht again, the author of rough erotic texts. “But don’t look him in the face while he’s fucking / And don’t crush his wings, man,” it says. Something similar is known from the early work, from “Baal” and the “Hauspostille”.

A nose ahead

It is not only an evening – but also! – for fans. Those who have had little to do with Brecht can learn more about the poet and his life from the texts between the songs – from the interwar period to exile and his return to the GDR. It’s surprisingly touching, especially towards the end. Brecht not only mastered the witty-critical and the cheerfully frivolous, but also the elegiac and yearning tone. “And I will no longer see the country in which I was born”, with these lines a Brecht is shown who, in memory of beautiful landscapes, is already facing his own death. An apolitical Brecht? Or is it the true Brecht after all, because it is precisely the insight of one’s own short duration on earth that demands that man be a helper to man?

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“Stranger than the Moon” is a great season opener that will surely be in the Berliner Ensemble’s repertoire for a long time to come. The evening also shows what the artistic director Oliver Reese, who also directed, relies on with great success at his house. Brecht is part of the brand core of the house – and this is cultivated with new productions. In addition to the “The Threepenny Opera” there are “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” or “Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti”. “Mann ist Mann” will follow early next year. And the puppet show “Brecht’s Ghosts” manages to cast an amusing look at Brecht himself.

In addition, Reese succeeds in attracting stars to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm again and again – like Mehrling now. In “Mein Name sei Gantenbein”, here too Reese took over the direction himself, Matthias Brandt is on stage. And Andrea Breth brought along Johanna Wokalek for her dark, melancholic recital “I dreamed the night”. It pays off, the occupancy figures published by Reese document lively public interest. This also secures those projects that tend to take place tentatively and tentatively on the smaller stages.

Now the Berliner Ensemble comes out with “Stranger than the Moon”, the title is also taken from a Brecht poem, brilliant from the summer break. In doing so, Reese also demonstrates that he wants to be a small step ahead of the other Berlin theaters. They don’t open their doors until September.