“andcompany&Co.”, the team of directors from Berlin consisting of three young theatre makers (Alexander Karschnia, Nicola Nord and Sascha Sulimma) presented their premiere of “Wunderkinder” at DT Göttingen with great aplomb.
This turbulent, comedic historical spectacle has two protagonists who are dissimilar friends, taken from the film „Wir Wunderkinder / Aren’t We Wonderful?“ (shot in 1958 in the former film city of Göttingen): Bruno Tiches (Florian Eppinger), the turncoat, and Hans Boeckel (Gerrit Neuhaus), the sincere one. Sometimes at the top, sometimes at the bottom. The macho type always remains on top, the one with a serious PhD tends to remain on the bottom. That’s life.

On Jan Brokof’s stage, the three-storey black-red-golden box disgorges 100 years of history. The audience rushes through the ages in free fall. Supported by musician Hans Kaul, the narrator Wojo von Brouwer puts commentaries in a nutshell, works with different kinds of cross-reference and intriguing levels of reflection. Between melancholia, joke and caricature, nothing remains untouched, nothing that is not laughed about. Up until today, the Berlin collective, who also developed the text, keeps spinning their yarn: with precision, intelligently, and with much theatrical variety.

Thirteen actors, who are on stage simultaneously for most of the time, slip into diverse roles: Lutz Gebhardt’s Hitler has half a moustache and acts entirely like Bruno Ganz in “The Downfall”. The other Hitler, played by Karl Miller, is like a chaplinesque dreamer, who gymnastically gains world dominion on a stability ball. When the war is over, turned over doll houses are littering the ground while the company /crew (nur schauspieler oder ganze crew?) sits down at the grand table. Dream over. It is a pity that the post-World War II years are dealt with only briefly: actors carry banners juggling with key words: student revolt, RAF, fall of the Berlin wall, and turncoats have long made it. Soon we are going to have a “Deutschland-Dämmerung,” one actress shouts angrily.

This is exceptionally entertaining and political theatre.