By Mareike Sophie Drünkler
The former Berlin crime scene inspector is not on the trail of criminals here, but Boris Aljinovic is chasing the truth as “Uncle Vanya”. The play premiered at the Schlosspark Theater on Saturday.
Landlord Dieter Hallervorden commissioned director Anatol Preissler to stage the story of Uncle Wanja, an eternal seeker who finds life and searching a burden. And in addition to music, humor and a strong ensemble, he also brought a new version of the text to Steglitz. The Austrian turned the stage classic written by Anton Chekhov in 1896 into an entertaining encounter with four wailing men.
Uncle Wanja (Boris Aljinovic) whines the loudest. Plagued by class struggle, 25 years of hard work and unanswered questions, Wanja takes refuge in the arms of the beautiful Jeléna (Dagmar Bernhard). The problem: Jeléna is not only the wife of his boss, the retired professor and passionate busybody Serebrjaków (Tilmar Kuhn); she wants Astrow (Mark Weigel).
When Jeléna’s stepdaughter Sónja, played by Helen Barke, also falls in love with the exciting country doctor, the trials and tribulations in the life of this Russian functional family get out of control. The rural idyll turns out to be a facade. Here the misfortune seems too great to be happy. So big that not even the honest wet nurse (Dagmar Biener) manages to stop the whining of the men…
Nevertheless, there was a lot of laughter on Saturday evening. On the one hand, this was due to the seven actors, who convinced the audience with a lot of feeling for their roles and the stage. On the other hand, there was Preissler’s attempt to be apolitical: His somewhat outdated staging took the play’s heaviness away, but gave the mention of Ukrainian place names between Russian slogans a bitter aftertaste. Nevertheless: worth seeing.