Review: Freiburg's Elemetarteilchen Atomised

Atomised - The Art of the Grotesque and Sexed Up 

                                        

Oskar Roehler's film "Elementarteilchen" (2006) 

After an hour and a half confusion reigned supreme in the audience at Freiburg's Grand Theatre. The applause just didn't come easily that night for the dramtised version of Michel Houellebecq's Atomised. It seemed even die hard theatre goers had to pause a moment and digest. Confusion was indeed a more amicable reaction, others afforded the actors with scorn. As the lights went back on I heard a women whisper quietly to her next seat neighbour: "And this is what we paid for?"
            In the beginning there was the sound, the synthezised version of a boy in a bathrobe and underwear practicing his scales on what could have been a xylophone. He is the non-participant, the commentator, the entertainer, the witness all rolled into one. After five minutes it becomes aggravating and repetitive, but this is when the music sets in and the actors enter the room, not necessarily the stage. When the DJ-figure plays an up-beat French classic on an old record player, the characters  are propelled into action. So with all the characters spread across the room the spectator's attention is, right from the get go, divided, the centre stage is not the most important place in the context of the story. No, its in fact the spectator him/herself who is constantly drawn to (in-)directly participate in the play, whether that means being kissed by one of the actresses or scolded for laughing. From the first word that is uttered in the theatre, coincidentally a life-affirming "Mir geht's top" (I am great), to the cacophonous telephone scene there is always the invisible other, the audience, present. 

          Although we are offered various tidbits of the story of Michel and Bruno, the two main characters in the novel, the retelling of the story is not the main part of the theatre experience. The play questions the societal treatment of literature, of communication through literature incorporating various types of multi-media elements from video projections, handheld cameras, the the book as an actual object, to the reenactment of the fabled session of the Literarisches Quartett paired with more traditional theatrical means cross dressing, balconies and trap doors. It's a play within a play, a metadramatic comment about how we approach literature and what it might turn into.
 Now, if you expect a straight forward retelling of the events described in Houellebecq's cult book, you will be thoroughly disappointed by how the material is treated, adapted, functionalized and offered up to the audience in bits and pieces glued together by the unifying arch of carefully crafted literary reception that ignites a powerful torrent of feelings in the spectator ranging from confusion to voyeuristic pleasure and revulsion paired with the odd tiny, yet profound feeling of shame. Everything on stage is constantly in flux, from gender distinctions, language and music to the tone ranging from sometimes jovial and merry to sometimes shockingly blunt and vulgar. The high culture entertainment has finally come to break the taboo on sex and sexual excesses, portraying the taboo as funny bit. When the very male, suddenly transgendered, actor uses a carton box as his version of a female vagina, the play becomes a blatant parody of a bad porno. The plastic dildo is no longer enough to satiate the sexual appetites, but even as the objects - from a Ficus to the handy telephone - become larger in size the end result is just frustration for both partners. In the end all come to the unsettling conclusion that the human existence is disappointing, nature is a bitch, and sex is regressive and dangerous. As the high culture institution breaks the taboo on the no-sex-rule, shining too much light on personal preferences,  especially when the the actors themselves break radically with the storyline, only to establish a metatheatrical commentary about the their characters, raising uncomfortable questions about sexuality and personal preferences - interview style.
By then my very peeved neighbour whispered quite harshly "I don't know why I am suffering through this", but the truth is, no matter whatever else you may think about Freiburg's Elementarteilchen, one must at least admit, the play, if you are so inclined to call it, is well crafted in terms of concept and audience participation. The performance as a whole is rather inspired and confronts the audience with uncomfortable questions, about life, literature and the way we deal with it. We are forced to make up our own minds about what we witness on stage. It is a plaidoyer for individuality and non-conformity just as sexist, pornographic,disturbing , condemnable and worthy of praise as its original. Leaving the theatre, I, while feeling severely chastised, paradoxically grew encouraged to find my own personal interpretation of dramatised, translated and culturally transposed novel by Michel Houllebecq: Atomised.



Theatre Freiburg
http://www.theater.freiburg.de/index/TheaterFreiburg/Monatsspielplan.html?SpId=41499

What's the novel about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomised

Review: Badische Zeitung
http://www.badische-zeitung.de/titisee-neustadt/christoph-frick-inszeniert-in-freiburg-elementarteilchen--64430557.html