The Rue de Lourcine Affair (Die Affäre Rue de Lourcine)
by Eugène Labiche
Director Karin Henkel
Stage Henrike Engel
Costumes Nina von Mechow
Music Arvild Baud
Dramaturgy Claus Caesar
Daramturgy Hannes Oppermann
Premiere January 17, 2016
A night of excessive alcohol. The following morning, Lenglumé is slowly coming round. He had a few drinks too many at last night’s reunion. And he outmanoeuvred his wife, who didn’t want him to go. Behind him he hears snoring. Did he pick someone up without realising? A man or a woman? Ah, it’s Mistingue, who was also at the reunion and who he knows in passing from his past. So just act as if everything is normal. But in the newspaper, there is a report of a young girl’s murder the night before in Rue de Lourcine. And all the evidence points to him and Mistingue. What now? A comedy about how the imagination can shape reality.
Michael GoldbergOscar Lenglumé
Felix GoeserMistingue / Norine
Anita VulesicaNorine
Christoph FrankenPotard / Justine
Wiebke MollenhauerJustine
Camill JammalSohn / Justine / Oscar Lenglumé
Oscar Lenglumé
Mistingue / Norine
Norine
Potard / Justine
Justine
Sohn / Justine / Oscar Lenglumé
"The way that illusion on stage is turned into an equally possible reality makes this show the devil’s work. The audience are shown that not only the Lenglumés but also our own consciousness is incapable of finding a fixed point to distinguish between reality and appearance, which means that nothing matters. Henkel, who cites Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Goethe’s Werner and Kleist’s Amphitryon, turns this lack of certitude into the slapstick foundation of her production." Flatulence and contingency
"The way that illusion on stage is turned into an equally possible reality makes this show the devil’s work. The audience are shown that not only the Lenglumés but also our own consciousness is incapable of finding a fixed point to distinguish between reality and appearance, which means that nothing matters. Henkel, who cites Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Goethe’s Werner and Kleist’s Amphitryon, turns this lack of certitude into the slapstick foundation of her production."
“Director Henkel plays with space – and time. The digital clock above the stage sometimes runs forwards, at other times backwards. Nothing is as it first seems. (…) The question ‘Who am I?’ hangs over this stage drama, which links it to Henkel’s production in Zurich of Amphitryon and his Doppelgänger. It was invited to the Theatertreffen in 2014 and also shown at the Deutsches Theater. Perhaps this will succeed too – because this clever production is highly entertaining, an aesthetic sensation and an acting experience.” Nothing is as it seems
“Director Henkel plays with space – and time. The digital clock above the stage sometimes runs forwards, at other times backwards. Nothing is as it first seems. (…) The question ‘Who am I?’ hangs over this stage drama, which links it to Henkel’s production in Zurich of Amphitryon and his Doppelgänger. It was invited to the Theatertreffen in 2014 and also shown at the Deutsches Theater. Perhaps this will succeed too – because this clever production is highly entertaining, an aesthetic sensation and an acting experience.”
“Henkel drives to the extreme the postmodern dilemma of identity – in a similar way to her Zurich guest production based on Kleist’s Amphitryon and his Doppelgänger at the Theatertreffen before last. The former wealthy burgher, in a state of shocked amusement, who ultimately discovers his darker, but nonetheless stable, second identity, becomes the modern man plagued by panic attacks, who only experiences categories such as ‘identity’ as a permanently crumbling façade. (…) Instead of subtle mechanisms of comedy, the main characters, Goldberg and Goeser lay emphasis on slapstick acrobatics in a conceptually strict top form. There is a fundamental (and correspondingly long) burping and farting scene. An exquisite masterpiece of deconstruction is the wonderful Anita Vulesica as Lenglumé’s wife Norine with monstrous fake teeth. The scene alone in which she demands of her husband in a utterly mechanical voice, ‘Oscar, do I get a kiss?’– in homage perhaps to the extreme performer Vegard Vinge – makes this show worth seeing." The slayer as nobleman
“Henkel drives to the extreme the postmodern dilemma of identity – in a similar way to her Zurich guest production based on Kleist’s Amphitryon and his Doppelgänger at the Theatertreffen before last. The former wealthy burgher, in a state of shocked amusement, who ultimately discovers his darker, but nonetheless stable, second identity, becomes the modern man plagued by panic attacks, who only experiences categories such as ‘identity’ as a permanently crumbling façade. (…) Instead of subtle mechanisms of comedy, the main characters, Goldberg and Goeser lay emphasis on slapstick acrobatics in a conceptually strict top form. There is a fundamental (and correspondingly long) burping and farting scene. An exquisite masterpiece of deconstruction is the wonderful Anita Vulesica as Lenglumé’s wife Norine with monstrous fake teeth. The scene alone in which she demands of her husband in a utterly mechanical voice, ‘Oscar, do I get a kiss?’– in homage perhaps to the extreme performer Vegard Vinge – makes this show worth seeing."
“The excitement is great, the speed is high, the theatre machine is running at full pelt, the revolving stage is turning, nearly every character is being followed by a doppelgänger, scenes are repeated and overtake each other. And yet from the beginning, the images are frozen – as cold as a morgue, as mechanised as a crematorium. Because, in fact, the set designer Henrike Engel has depicted the apartment and bedroom of the unlucky fellow Oscar Lenglumé as a crematorium." Great excitement and high speed
“The excitement is great, the speed is high, the theatre machine is running at full pelt, the revolving stage is turning, nearly every character is being followed by a doppelgänger, scenes are repeated and overtake each other. And yet from the beginning, the images are frozen – as cold as a morgue, as mechanised as a crematorium. Because, in fact, the set designer Henrike Engel has depicted the apartment and bedroom of the unlucky fellow Oscar Lenglumé as a crematorium."