You know that breaking point which is reached when the happenings of life, or one particular incident, is so absurd, you can’t help but just laugh? As the pool of shit floods slowly, reaching up to your earlobes, you just laugh. But this is not just any laugh. It starts out as a light chuckle of disbelief, followed by it gradually powering up into a wild-eyed, heaving cackle. Something similar to this:
Because you’ve just realised how absurd the whole show is; that all of this search for meaning and happiness by us humans in life really is just as ridiculous as trying to read bedtime fairy tales to a serial killer. Such a perspective on absurdity is conjured in Albert Camus’ Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding) which recently opened at the Volkstheater. A smirk remained on our lips the whole way through the play.
“There was a misunderstanding…” – says the mother of the son she’s just killed. If you’re ignorant to Camus’ cynical smirk of a play, the plot goes a little something like this: a man who has been living overseas for many years returns home to reconnect with his mother, yet instead finds his mother and sister making a living murdering guests at their hotel. Well, he doesn’t find this out until he becomes one of the guests. The mother and sister are unaware of his identity (while suspicions niggle about the sister), hence the “misunderstanding.” This simple word could wipe a sunflower field clean of its petals when spoken by the actors behind the puppets on the Volkstheater stage.
The word especially carries significance as it is spoken by the mouth of a puppet’s face that will revisit you days later. All protagonist puppets and the actors with their hands up them – from the timid Jan (performed by Florian Köhler) to the the mother (Seyneb Saleh) to the sister Martha (Nikolaus Habjan, the play’s director) have a way of sucking in the audience upon the pauses between sentences. And how they become one with the puppets, performing with them as if they are just an extension of themselves, with seamless natural movements, is truly impressive.
On a haunting set with nothing but – what looks like – a sinking guest house plonked in the middle of it, puppets bring actors to life, and vice versa, in this clever adaptation of Camus’ short, yet potently poetic piece.
And the decision to do this play with puppets by the young puppeteer and director, Nikolaus Habjan, is a clever pull of the strings.
That the absurd, dark tale of human misery is told with puppets – and all their childhood connotations (even though these puppets would have made me hide under a pillow as a child) – only deepens the ‘absurd’s’ grip on the awkward humour of the whole miserable mess that transpires on stage.
Yes, it obeys to the style of a Greek tragedy (intentional, on Camus’ behalf), yet I walked out whistling a tune, and almost with a skip in my step. And muttering the poetry of Camus under my breath. There is no doubt this is how Camus intended The Misunderstanding to be swallowed by the audience. The cast of four “puppetors” (we just made this word up for when actors become puppets, and vice versa – our mothers told us we’re clever) execute Camus’ wish well, with the tragedy, absurdity, irony and poetry intact.
And while the subtle role of the der alte Knecht (the old servant) seems minor, be sure to pay attention to this haunting figure who crawls over the sinking guesthouse at curtain rise. It is significant and sinister, and will disturb you to understand how as you whistle to the choice of the jolly French tune playing as the servant indifferently cleans up the mess of the suicides and deaths by hanging the puppets up in a closet-like cupboard on stage near the end.
Many critics claimed this was a play impossible to perform successfully. Habjan‘s and the Volkstheater’s current attempt has revealed how absurd this opinion is.
Applause factor:
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