Theatre Review

Production: Emilia Galotti

By: Deutsches Theater Berlin

Author: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Director: Michael Thalheimer

Principle Actors: Nina Hoss, Ingo Hulsmann, Sven Lehmann, Peter Pagel, Barbara Schnitzler, Henning Vogt, Regine Zimmermann

Where: Stratford Festival Of Canada

Venue: Avon Theatre

Run: November 6^th – 9^th (a touring show since 2001, so check to see if it will be performed in your area)

Notes: This is a German play with English surtitles.

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey (Ontario Correspondent)

Shakespeare shows us that plays do not lose the relevancy they possess over the mere turning of time; after all we still ask the questions Hamlet did. In the shaping of time and history, some plays are just as relevant as ever, and the Stratford Shakespeare Festivals final play of the season (performed by a traveling tour from the Deutsches Theater Berlin), Emilia Galotti, originally produced in 1772, can be both modern and post-modern at the same time.

Like all nymphets of literature, Emilia Galotti has made a prince fall in love with her from a one-night encounter at a soiree. The prince, Hettore Gonzaga, is so moved by his passion, he plots a way of getting his beloved Emilia, discarding his already relationship with Orsina, and pre-empting Emilia’s marriage to Count Appiani which is to take place on the very day the play is set. Emilia’s parents, Orsina, and Marinelli (Hettore’s chamberlain) all play pivotal parts in the play. Emilia’s Fiancée, Count Appiani, makes a brief appearance before his untimely death that is the coil which springs this tragic story into motion. 

Emilia Galotti makes a stunning entrance for the onset of the play, as she walks steadily towards the very front of the stage as two lit flames follow behind her along her walkway, which are diminished by a cascade of showering fireworks behind Emilia.

The set was poignantly barren, with a plain white wall at the pinnacle of a forced perspective set that was flanked by wide, light-brown panels. The costumes were clean as the men dressed in suits and the women dressed in minimalist outfits that one might have pegged a Vera Wang influence on. The void set and costumes brought the plays story to present day, but hailed a futuristic feel as well in tow. Definitely, the music thrust the viewers into the post-modernist feeling as the theme music was predominantly a perpetual plucking of violin strings, with the occasional sweeping overture from the violin in its truest use.

Aside from the costumes and set, even though the production was in German with surtitles, it was easily the performances that made this version of Emilia Galotti so compelling. Regine Zimmermann as Emilia was enigmatic, as was her Mother, performed by Barbara Schnitzler. Much of the plays comedy came from Ingo Hulsmann as Marinelli, who was a persistent go-between throughout the plot; he both did the Prince’s bidding, and clearly defined his own part within the story as well. Orsina, the scorned woman, played by Ingo Hulsmann was both beautiful, and aptly cold. Both Emilia’s Father and her fiancée, Peter Pagel and Henning Vogt respectively, had brief but pertinent roles that they made full of depth. However, my complete awe goes to Sven Lehmann as the Prince, who is enraptured by the ideal of love and somewhat captivated by his own image in such an expression. Lehmann was delightfully watchable throughout. The whole cast played equally off each other, to pull a stunning performance together. Each performer appeared to have an awesome understanding of emotion unhinged.

Much of the Emilia Galotti was revealed through performance as opposed to language, and some fantastic existentialist humour, and intense emotion, was riveting to watch in this bourgeois tragedy. Emilia Galotti was Shakespearean in its ‘oomph’ but Nietzsche in its form.

Here is a trailer for the production of Emilia Galotti, actually using the cast members I have mentioned in this review: