Great Stage Acting Shines Through, Even From a Laptop Screen - The New York Times

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Theater review

The Lessingtag Theatre Festival held online this year due to the epidemic showcased some of Europe's best performers in the form of classic dramas by Brecht, Schiller, Ibsen and others.

Munich-For a recorded theater, a great performance translates a video into a much better film than a well-made movie with complex concepts or complex scenes. Therefore, when Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany invites 10 European theaters to send their best performances to the online film festival-an international music festival held in January each year, in general, the theater enjoys more performances than stage art performances .

As a result, "

", is an extensive survey of contemporary European theater, focusing on some of the continent’s top stage actors. In an era when people were rarely allowed to travel and theaters were even less open, it was discovered from the Iberian Peninsula to Russia The opportunity for his recent stage works is particularly important.

Although a small number of "Lessingtage Digital" works made their debut during the pandemic, most of the works offered are several quarters old, and online viewers can take this opportunity to discover works whose live broadcasts have ended.

Anne Lenk's fashion, dedicated stage performance"

", the film was screened at the Deutsche Theater Berlin in October. Throughout the evening, eight actors performed from isolated pink cubes in Judith Oswald's corona-friendly suit. However, Lenk was against Schiller's interpretation of historical tragedy does not rest on its laurels or trivialities.

The cast, dressed in Sibylle Wallum's gorgeous costumes, is always superb, alive in the emotional and political turmoil of the drama and how they intersect. This is especially true for incandescent stars in production. Franziska Machens is Mary, she struggles to survive from a prison cell, and Julia Windischbauer is Her proud but conflicting rival Elizabeth.

The two queens only face each other in the climax of the 10-minute duel. Mary refuses to recognize Elizabeth's superiority, but brags about her chance of salvation to taste victory. In works that continue to emerge from great performances, this confrontation stands out because of its original charge.

Lenk's flat beauty is also friendly to high-definition cameras, and it captures the boiling performance with its eye-catching directness.

The excellent performance of another work also left a deep impression on me.

,"

Translate to the screen. This fascinating mythical dramatic monologue provides a fascinating overture for the heroine (one year old and one young), and it will be released at about the same time as "Mary Stewart". Under the direction of Guy Cassiers, the artistic director of Toneelhuis in Antwerp, Belgium, the French music group Danel Quartet performed the Shostakovich string quartet for the two parts of the evening, and they were unified through a video feed.

In "Antigone", author Stefan Hertmans transfers the tragedy of Sophocles to contemporary Belgium, where law student Nouria (Ikram Aoulad) begins a vain attempt to retrieve the body of his brother ISIS fighter from the forensic laboratory. . Aoulad greeted the audience and conveyed the character's pain and firm sense of justice in an elegant and shocking way.

In "Tiricians", the actress Katelijne Damen recites a dazzling, confusing poem by the young British poet Kae Tempest, which is A subversive restatement of the myth of the prophet of gender equality for the blind. Damen's interpretation of the beautiful text is through elegance and wit. What is particularly impressive is how Toneelhuis' widescreen camera (photographed by Charlotte Bouckaert, who was also responsible for the scene) successfully captured the power of the indoor theater.

The work of Bertolt Brecht of the Berliner Ensemble"

. The dramatic miracle of Michael Thalheimer's fine-grained performance can be boiled down to two words: Stefanie Reinsperger.

Since 2017, the young Austrian actress has been a member of the theater troupe, and the ferocious survival artist Grusha Vashnadze at the center of Brecht’s late theater is her One of the first roles in theater. This peasant girl protects an abandoned baby from the horrors of war. I am very happy to get this kind of original experience through the screen: living in a theater, close up and private life, I don't know if I can accept it.

On the other hand, Eszter Onodi in "

", the update of Ibsen's "Doll House" makes me feel as if I am sitting in the auditorium of the Joseph Katona Theater in Budapest instead of watching it alone in the living room. In a seemingly simple performance , Onodi stripped the character’s skills to reveal unexpected depth. The young director of the script, Kriszta Szekely, brought the feminist heroine to today and re-enacted the play after a faithful remake. 150 years after the premiere of the scandal, the contemporary significance of Nora's plight.

In Italian and Swedish ensemble works, a single performance is not as important as the symbiotic energy generated from large molds, which make their performances live as a collective.

The most exciting production of the festival is "

", Luigi Pirandello's 1917 farce, staged by Filippo Dini at the Teatro Stabile, tells a group of villagers trying to understand a mysterious new neighbor The truth.

In Dini's performance, townspeople sit around magnificent apartments, and if the apartment rots, they put decorative moldings on the high ceilings and cover them with furniture. This 12-person cast constitutes a close and dynamic unit, and they have the right tone and comedy timing.

Bright contemporary work by Mattias Andersson

One of the co-producers of the festival, the Royal Theatre Theatre in Stockholm has a larger stage than Pirandello. One of the two phased versions of Dostoevsky’s novel during the festival:

It is the basically speechless expressionist gesture of the four physical actors of the Moscow State Theater, a wildcard for activity.

David Dencik's fragile and fearless performance as Prince Myshkin laid the foundation for an epic performance in Sweden. After he was released from the Swiss nursing home, he found himself plagued by the highs and lows of Russian society.

Even though these props seem to come from IKEA, and the large actors spend most of the night on stage, this kind of work manages to paint a huge social canvas full of damaged and emotional Characters, these characters span centuries and talk to us in different languages.

When announcing the festival’s lineup, I was shocked by how many classic authors were selected-far exceeding the general level of European theater festivals today. After absorbing 10 works of Lessingtage, I wonder why this should be unexpected.

Schiller, Ibsen, Brecht and Pirandello created the richest and most complex characters on the stage. Apart from watching the best stage actors in Europe bring them fresh lives, even after dismantling our computer screens, what could be more interesting than this?

Until January 31, online streaming;

.