Blind Date (Schauspielhaus Graz)

This review is for the Thursday, May 19th, 2011 performance of Blind Date by Theo Van Gogh which took place at the Schauspielhaus Graz Hauptbühne.

Acting - 8.5/10
Direction - 9.5/10
Design - 9.5/10
Sound - 8/10
Affectiveness - 9/10

Overall - 9/10

     This play is based on a film, which I never saw, but now I believe I might want to see after experiencing this thought-provoking production of Blind Date at the Schauspielhaus Graz. Someone seeing this production without knowing that it was originally a movie would find no markers of a bad movie-to-stage adaption.

Pom (August Zirner) alone in his club.

     The stage was well used and the set was never boring (thanks to Stage Designer Jens Burde). The set consists of a bar and a small vaudevillian stage which gives the effect of a basement club. What makes the stage design remarkable is that the bar moves between scenes without the need of stagehands (in the style of musicals). There were only three actors in this piece, adding another person to move the set would have destroyed the close almost clauserphobic relationship between the three characters. The set also employed the use of the Drehbühne (Rotating Stage) which added to the sometimes chaotic nature of the piece and it allowed for quick scene shifts, ultimately giving us the feeling that time has now moved on.
     The acting was strong by all three members of the cast. Stefan Suske as the Waiter gave the main story of the dysfuntional couple a human backbone, although, he was a silent observer most of the time, a type of wallflower. Suske showed us a lonely middle aged workhorse, who, despite having clear romantic interest in Katja, almost appears as a their child by being too nervous to interrupt his parent's bickering. This is ironic given that the story revolved around the main characters' inability to be normal and functional human beings after the tragic loss of their child.

Left to right: Zirner, Suske, and Krautz.

     Steffi Krautz, who plays Katja, and August Zirner, playing Pom, have the arduous task of presenting two distraught and distroyed people trying despirately to reignite their once loving relationship. Krautz and Zirner showed the many layers of grief: hysteria, utter sadness, blame, denile, anger, and need. These were real people experiencing pain so deep that they cannot reintergrate themselves normally into society or continue to function as a family. Both actors captured our attention and sympathy, showing that theatrical tragedy isn't just about kings or salesmen, but it's a result of sad life events that go unresolved and build into something unbearable. My only criticism about the acting of the two principle actors is that sometimes I felt they were hopping from emotion to emotion. Krautz would go from expressing something dark and then automatically switching to happy denile. The transition between the darkness and happy denile was completely missing, or shall I say jumped over. It didn't just happen once, it happened often. The grey areas were rushed - the most interesting and vulerable part of the human condition was compressed. This rushing emotions was sometimes disjointing to me, almost like a Brechtian Gestus in that I was snapped out my empathy and was reminded that I was watching actors portray grieving characters. I'm sure not everyone experienced this, but nevertheless the grey zones, aka transitions, was something I would have liked to experience more of.
     The story flowed, the characters moved from scene to scene with great ease and the meaning of the piece, I believe, was received by all audience members. This all adds up to good directing.
     Bernadette Sonnenbichler, the director, used sound effects greatly to the piece's advantage. The start of the story is a bit hard to get into because the huge stage is only inhabited by three actors, our eye wanders around looking for more actors, or our brain is caught thinking about the wonderful dinner we just had. This is where the use of music and sound can immediately take our mind out of our unrelated thoughts and plant our interest into the actors and the story. Many times the acordian music gave a feeling of a french film and immediately my mind was filled with conventionally french ideas of great love and great loss. Interestingly enough, that's what the play was about (I did not read a synopsis beforehand).
     Overall, this is a very interesting and affective piece of theatre. It's a puzzle to figure out at first, but once the pieces start to fall into place the audience is left to experience the looming downfall of these two shattered people. Shattered because of the loss of their child, loss of their relationship, and lost grip on reality. This play is tragic and leaves you without much joy. In regards to that thought, tragedy is meant to be cathartic, it gives you hope and influences you to not take loved ones for granted. This show did that.