Remember the Berlin bank scandal? Here's the BBC's 2001 coverage, in case you don't. Basically the Bankgesellschaft Berlin, in which the city has a 57% share, went bust on loans it had given to finance rebuilding Berlin. The city projected an additional $2.6 billion would have to be spent to fix this problem, adding to an already monumental debt and basically securing Berlin's bankruptcy. That's how I understood it, anyway.
Last weekend was the premier of Bankenstück, Lutz Hübner's drama about the bank affair, directed by Volker Hesse. I haven't seen the show but love the fact that Berlin's theatre scene tolerates a rendition of recent/current politics (see the Neuköllner Oper's production of Angela, about CDU head Angela Merkel, in 2002).
The reviews of Hesse's production are divided, as one might expect, between those who just enjoy the parody of Berlin politics and those who were looking for a more in-depth, perhaps journalistic angle on the story. Hübner's story is a futuristic fantasy, a nod to Brecht, with perhaps a heavier hand: the people of Berlin get to take The Banks to task for their crimes against the citizenry (I think I've got this right; anyone seen it?). A short-lived revolution follows:
"We learn nothing about the so-called bank scandal, the collapse of the Bankgesellschaft Berlin and the (to this day) barely foreseeable consequences of that billion-dollar bankruptcy...Oh, what drama. You can't help but become a reactionary [watching it]. It sways in populist tones back and forth between the fall of 1989 ('We are the People'), the Argentine and Haitian uprisings against poverty, and the Attac demonstrations against globalization. As if the conditions [in Berlin] were comparable in the slightest . Marauding amazons throw tires around the necks of bankers, pour gasoline over them, thrust cigarette lighters into the air with a lusty, threatening gesture. The director doesn't spare the action scenes and the stilted theatrical violence. Ah, harmless revelry." [Rüdiger Schaper at the Tagesspiegel]
See also Ulrich Seidler's review at the Berliner Zeitung, and this interview with Hübner at Spiegel Online.
Posted by Heather at March 24, 2004 09:42 AM
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