BAM BAM BAM - Theatre Internationale @ Brooklyn Academy of Music

Before the thoughts leave:
We had a nice slice of international theater this year. There was the Polish company TR Warszawa with their unforgettable production of "Krum". Then from Germany came the Thalia Theater's chilling production of Wedekind's "Lulu". Finally there was James Thiérrée's Nouvelle Cirque "Au Revoir Parapluie".
Well two out of three ain't bad.
I will state simply I have never gone in for the nouvelle cirque esthetic, and Thiérrée's production didn't change my mind. Hats off to the performers, who give their all to this piece of fluff.
Much more intensely enjoyable was TR Warszawa's "Krum". Written by Israeli playwright Hanoch Levin, it tells the story of a man who comes home from travelling bearing nothing, not even for his mother! In Krum's world there is nothing. Sex is a bumpy, lumpy act. So is eating. It's not a pretty story, but this company of actor's are so physically rooted in their characters, we know their pain and sorrow on an empathic level. Despite all the gasps going in (two and three quarter hours and NO intermission?!?), no one left this clever production early.
A similar severity was encountered with the Thalia Theater's "Lulu". Directed by Michael Thalheimer (whose earlier production at BAM Emilia Galante was mesmerizing), this production is stripped of every prop except a gun and a knife. A blank white wall marches incessantly forward, pushing these the sad doomed lives of it characters closer to our face as they come to their retched end. Lulu is not presented as a vixen or seductress, but as a young sexually precocious gamin. In her world, Lulu is everything to everyone, and so, ultimately, worthless.
Again it was the actors great physical presence on the stage that allowed us to understand the rise and fall of this young woman, her dramatic impact on the lives around her, her utter despair and solitude when she turns her final trick with Jack the Ripper. (thank goodness since the supertitles were slow and not well translated)