In Hamlet-Machine, the underground is incomparably larger than the surface. The world is deconstructed. Human passions are an incandescent matter in Heiner Müller’s writing. A great solitude: “I withdraw into my guts.”
In Hamlet-Machine, the setting is “the ruins of Europe”. The story in Heiner Müller is not a television documentary, it’s raw feeling.
Hallucination: a man, a playwright in the German Federal Republic, sets up a meeting between Hamlet, a tragic Shakespearean hero, and the tragedy of the 20th century world: Hamlet in the middle of the class struggle. “A tragic ending.” “If my drama had taken place, I would be on both sides…”.
This performance is also a meeting. A meeting of normally dissociated theatrical languages. Of signs. Of creators who are accomplices in the theatrical universe of Heiner Müller. Of flesh and bone performers and metal marionettes with a text of great contemporaneity, which is at the same time a reflection on history, a drama of a suffered existence: “They should sew the women up, a world without mothers.”
Then a stop, maybe death. “When she goes through your bedrooms with butcher knives, you shall know the truth.”
Isabel Barros, João Paulo Seara Cardoso
