“Am Königsweg” by Falk Richter (Theatertreffen selection)



Sensory overload. Video-projections and multi-voiced declamations. Oidipus and euro-stars. White supremacist and Kermit the Frog. Enormous boobs and a stand-up gig on fascism. Deutsche Bank and Trump. Deutsche Bank and working class. Deutsche Bank and angry young white man. Dick-pics and KKK. Old paintings and Facebook chat. Old woman and words. Young women and words. (Men have their words anyway.) Kings and words. Women and men and no more words … and then more words. “Am Königsweg” feeds you with so much information simultaneously that you're either in the constant mode of being in awe or you just block everything out.
Elfriede Jelinek is, no doubt, right drawing the reason to outcome line from the frustrated, in debt working man to the rise of the alt-right and the earning for a no-bullshit King. That Trump has been the igniter of this play is perhaps even too clear, leaving the audience without any obligation to guess. It could work but it doesn't. “Am Königsweg” mixes long speeches, lectures even, with relief-offering funny gags. Although the lectures are well constructed and jokes are funny it all comes off insanely didactic and somehow misses the target. The poor white working man does get multiple laughs from the audience but I doubt any of them recognize themselves, their behavioral patterns in what is shown on stage. Yes, we are spoken to and accused directly but it's no more than a friendly, look-how-bold-I-am banter one expects to enjoy at a dinner party.
All that wouldn't necessarily bother me (so much) if the aesthetics of the performance weren't so traditional. “Am Königsweg” takes all the attractive tools of postmodernism (like chaotic-on-purpose visual references and deconstruction of myths) to make the play-text look like postdramatic. Again, this might be a clever solution but shouldn't a production about how we never want something new, only the old to come back, at least try not to follow the same laziness in its aesthetic choices? To make the audience really understand that they have been laughing at themselves all this time without even knowing it.

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