The Rats

Michael Thalheimer’s production leaves no room for decent people – the actors are jammed into a wooden press that fills the front of the stage, forcing them to perform with bent heads and backs. All these strangely contorted proportions produce a fitting image of Berlin’s rat-infested tenement attics, and of the oppressive social conditions in Gerhart Hauptmann’s unflinchingly naturalist portrayal. Thus the drama is played out in the slit between two planks of wood: an unfulfilled wish for a baby and the catastrophic decision to steal one, themes which engender timeless tragedy. The actors playing the lower classes use a strong, exaggerated working-class accent which actually hinders our identification and empathy with Frau John’s desperate act and fear of never having a baby, Pauline Piperkarcka’s junkie-like regret, and Bruno’s devious propensity to violence. But the actors – Constanze Becker and Regine Zimmermann, along with Sven Lehmann and Niklas Kohrt – nonetheless perform under immense emotional pressure, with their mouths and eyes like sluices that let the passions run through. Standing right next to them, the theatre director Hassenreuter and the student Spitta hold their dispute about the image of man in art – bohemians they may be, but they are also stooping. Thalheimer neither modernises nor historicises Hauptmann. His production of “Die Ratten” is a dark and expressive portrait of humanity, before which the audience is completely spellbound.