Hier und Jetzt

There is no shallow box like Jürgen Gosch and his designer Johannes Schütz usually use in the former factory but a long table for a wedding reception. The audience sit opposite the wedding guests on terraces built into a pile of earth with sprouting grass. The premiere production of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s “Hier und Jetzt” [Here and Now] is expansive in both space and time. A tragicomic love triangle jumps forward, then back in time, repeats itself and plays out variations, it changes seasons and moods. Time marches on, from sober daylight to warm artificial light where wine also takes effect. The wedding guests stand up, take possession of the space, deliver hilarious lectures about insects, tell of a coup de foudre in a shop for electrical goods, just like mad knights, sing children’s songs or blow forlornly on a battered hunting horn. Fragments of memories collide in a wonderfully rhythmic continuous flow, both swift and hesitant, gentle and rough. A three hour feast of acting.