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After a rather long time I went to the theatre again. Theatres in Göttingen are a mixed bag, with the Deutsches Theater having all the nice trimmings of a traditional building with fancy seats and everything but mediocre plays on most occasions when I went there, Junges Theater who have a bit of a history for erring by being too far on the ‘modern’ side (although I think that changed for better recently) and the ThOP which is situated in an old university operating theatre and thus has quite a cool setup - with the small audience sitting in steep rows on both sides of it. I have always like that one best - if only it was the first theatre in Göttingen I ever went to.
And now they played Baal, the first play by Bertolt Brecht. Which I didn’t know from my extensive literature education but rather ran into because a friend gave me a CD with rare David Bowie tracks and the BBC turned the play into a film in the 1980s, starring David Bowie. To be honest I am not entirely the 80s and Brecht are the best match for Brecht, but I haven’t seen the film, so I’ll reserve judgement for later.
And this was on stage. Her and now. The play was very long - almost three hours - and it was a hot day. Yet, it was totally worth going and I didn’t even notice the time pass. Kudos to the actors, particularly the one playing Baal who was on stage and intensely present the entire time, for putting on that long and impressive show. Also kudos for the big effort they made to create an atmosphere for the piece which started the moment you came in - with the tinny piano music also played (live) in between scenes already being on -, continued through the piece - with a narrator introducing the scenes and the people in them - and even into the interval - where some of the actors remained in their roles and sold drinks, which may be bordering on ‘overdone’ but wasn’t.