Kabale und Liebe, or Falling Out of Love

In the late 18^th century, the German dramatist Friedrich Schiller sought to craft a stagework that would establish a sociopolitical portrait of his time. Living in an era with class conflicts, a time in which the nobility abused their authority to sell off their own people, it is apparent that he sought redress by immortalizing the corruption of the upper classes and the tragedies suffered by the bourgeois on the stage. He sought to expose the cold inhumanity that had come to define court life, the nobles’ lack of empathy for the common people, and how love and virtue can be destroyed by the machinations of the powerful. He titled his work, Kabale Und Liebe, or Love and Intrigue.

Even the relatively faithful adaptations of source materials on Berlin stages tend to seem rather experimental and deconstructionist to the uninitiated. Tonight, the Berliner Ensemble offered no exception. Characters were clothed in buffoonish, clown-like costumes. The set design hung multiple objects, ranging from chairs to instruments from the ceiling, only coming down within the actors’ grasp when they were relevant to the scene. Certainly, the aesthetic vaguely recalled its historical origins, but through the lens of what seemed like a fever dream. The acting fluctuated between extremes with no middle ground; characters were either explosively hot or mind-numbingly passive. There was a comic eccentricity to it all; but few in the audience seemed to be laughing.

I’m not sure. Perhaps I missed something in the performance. Perhaps I’m too much of an uncultured philistine to appreciate this sort of theatre. All I know is that I tried to stare into a cultural window, and all I saw was a reflection of my own frustrated visage. If there is one scene that stuck with me, it was when the male lead, Ferdinand, destroyed his violin in a fit of rage. This moment was the perfect encapsulation of my feelings toward the show.