If anybody would be interested in finding out what is Tankred Dorst’ play “Herr Paul” about – after seeing the show signed by Radu Afrim – it should be said the play is an admirable exposure of the effects a crash between generations can produce. The play was written in 1992 and it has been translated in many languages until Victor Scoradet signed the Romanian version. Herr Paul is the survivor of the post-war era, he reaches the end of the 20th century after a lot of traumatizing historical events to live his last years in a small apartment in a building on the edge of collapse situated in the middle of a developing town. When a young man full of initiative who inherited the building shows up in Herr Paul’s apartment, a place full of old things and a lot of stuffed animals, the conflict is ready to explode. A new aggressive world, eager to build up, to change, to bring a new perspective has attacked the old mister Paul and his charm coming from past times cannot save him anymore. He is asked to move out and the young people who are doing it – the heir, his girlfriend and his business partner – will depose him in his own realm, symbolically killing him. And still, on another, higher level , Herr Paul will be the winner.
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How can someone make seem funny such a subject – it’s only Radu Afrim who can show us on stage. It is easy to discover that he is inclined to favour the “old world” whose exponent Herr Paul is. The visual impact is impressive and it strikes the spectator from the very beginning, thanks to the excellent set-design signed by Iuliana Valsan. The way she organizes the performing space creates the sensation of suffocation, but the accumulation of objects becomes the clear sign of the duration, the palpable proof of the time spent here by the old man and his sister. A time has passed that becomes a real act of property, especially there is no legal one. The most interesting thing is the performing space changes as the show goes on and becomes friendly, homey, full of surprises for the spectator, like a magical box that unfolds unexpectedly and exposes plenty of secret passages, hiding places, strange funny objects which are a source of amazement for the audience. The morning ritual placed at the beginning of the show includes the awakening and the caressing of the stuffed animals then the cooking of the food and it has the effect of bringing the old strange couple very close to the spectators, who become their allies.
As always, Afrim’s production takes sides with the marginalized, people placed at the edge of humanity, society and times, but in the middle of the human warmness. The production is full of warm humour, the characters are candid and their existence is pure poetry, even if it takes place in gloominess. It is moving the interaction of the old Paul (Cezar Antal) and Louise (Lucretia Mandric) with the stuffed animals who seem real for them – the hens are still producing eggs, the hedge is used to scratch the back and the skunk to scare away the strangers – as real as the retarded girl of the neighbours, Anita (Anda Gavriliu) who becomes a key-character in the production, kind of a soul of the entire show. She keeps the old people alive and present in their strange realm, a realm of free imagination, apart from the general rules of pragmatism who reigns all around. Herr Paul doesn’t ever get out the house, he doesn’t open his correspondence, or he pretends not to, his sister Louise goes to the opera house, even though it remains unclear if she really gets there or it’s only an imaginary journey. The house looks like a museum, the walls paved with stamps, old plates and paintings. The old man and woman wear long mantles cut off an oldish material and strange things come out from under: a night gown for Louise and a suit carrying on its back a small child coat for Paul, who carries his innocence with him in spite of his age. Cezar Antal plays one of his best parts ever, clearly entering the high league of the best young Romanian actors. He plays a composition character but without the usual tricks that actors use to cheat about the age of their characters and he finally succeeds in looking like an ageless being, coming from another planet, a planet where age simply doesn’t count.
The characters “on the other side of the barricade” are treated ironically even with despise, not by the playwright but by the director who identifies them with usurpers of a special lifestyle, a lifestyle that preserves the last remains of warm humanity, a lifestyle that will take away with it the soul of things sold for imobiliar purposes. Helm’s girlfriend, Lilo (Isabela Neamțu), is a rather mindless creature with no direction whatsoever, a character which has to pass a casting test, an irony of the director towards all guarding angels of the “old tradition of theater”. Here’s where the director changes his mind and pleads for the new instead of the old, but it’s such a subtle move that only professionals can detect.
Helm (Matei Rotaru) is also ironized, his capacity of understanding the situation being questioned. As for his subordonation to the business partner he invited to come and check the old house in order to invest in it and open a business here, this becomes a rather sexual interaction. The woman’s money will come only as a reward for his sexual favours – the director comments upon a tendency easy to observe in the macho business field (in Dorst’s play the business partner is a man, not a woman). Despite the irony towards the newcomers, there is a moment in the show when „the new”, the progress becomes acceptable, thanks to a monologue given by young Helm in a dim light, facing a window where the light comes from outside, leaving shadows over his face, while he seems absorbed by a vision of the future. As a response to this moment, at the end of the show we discover that Helm and his girlfriend are more human after meeting Herr Paul and his sister, as if they would have been saved from the pattern of pragmatism and transposed into another dimension of life.
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The production is extremely coherent when it comes to the director’s vision. Even if Afrim builds again an universe printed with his favourite themes and he comments upon the fight between old and new, upon what people should keep or change in order to become better human beings, the result is not very far from Tankred Dorst’s intentions with the play. It is true the director favours the fantastic dimension of the show: Anita’s immersions in the performing space are gaps in the reality of the play, she once brings in a small train full of little stuffed animals, than attaches a fish head to Helm, who becomes a strange animal, and finally she gives a dance solo mixing ballet movements with modern dance (excellent choreography signed by Andrea Gavriliu).
The comic potential of the show is another thing that deserves to be mentioned. The Afrim comic style is a mixture of derailment from the reality patterns and allusions inspired by actuality. Afrim has developed in time a sort of meta-language translating the parts of the characters into a slang ready to understand by the internet navigators as well as by everybody who is a man/woman of their times. This is the contemporary sign of Afrim’s shows which are rather out of time. His rejection of realism as a style doesn’t mean this director wants to escape “now” and “here”, it’s only that he treats “now” and “here” differently, compared to other directors from the same generation.
The comic climax of the production based on “Herr Paul” is reached when everyone starts to play together an indian dance, the choreography being extracted directly from Bollywood movies, which gives the ensemble a surrealistic dimension. This is a totally unexpected celebration of the fact that after all, in a very subtle and hard to understand way, Herr Paul is the winner.
