By Mareike Sophie Drünkler
Legal means okay. Or not? Brecht’s “Herr Puntila and his servant Matti” is about the search for right, wrong and capitalist morality. The piece premiered at the Berliner Ensemble on Saturday.
Manor owner Puntila (Sascha Nathan) never has enough. He is gluttonous, addicted to consumption, constantly looking for money, alcohol, women. And he always keeps a distance of “ten steps” from the “servants”. Only his daughter Eva (Nora Quest) is really important to him.
But now Eva also seems to give less and less to her father’s rule. She wants to break out of her golden cage. For the bored princess of capitalism, the forbidden love for the chauffeur, the servant Matti, turns into rebellion. An ordeal. For Eva, Puntila and for Matti (Peter Moltzen), who stands between the worlds.
Director Christina Tscharyiski did not have to dramatically change Bertolt Brecht’s play, which premiered in 1948. Apparently effortlessly she managed to bring the material up to date.
The stage turns to rubble as we watch Puntila’s attempt to satisfy his insatiable need for more fail. symbolic. Shattering glass bottles, eccentric costumes, blaring workers’ choirs and emotional explosions ask how much is enough.
Thanks to a strong cast and excellent aesthetics, Tscharyisky’s encounter with man-made suffering is almost beautiful.
Notable: Peter Moltzen as Matti. His nuanced acting makes Brecht’s Torn Servant a complex character about which one learns more and more and always wants to know more.