Theater: We sing in the nuclear shelter
Reading time: 3 min.
Armin Petras is staging his adaptation of Chekhov's "Tesla, the Spree and the Cherry Orchard" at the Cottbus State Theater. At the end, of course, the world ends, or almost.
The earth is contaminated with nuclear radiation, and the survivors vegetate in underground bunkers. A crazy old man named Firs (Kai Börner) has set up an illegal vegetable patch among the ruins somewhere in Brandenburg . The German allotment gardener is unfazed by an annoying nuclear incident. Down in the bunker, Lopakhin (Ferdinand Lehmann), who once worked in middle management at an automobile company, has a firm answer to all questions about the meaning of life: "I'm just doing my duty. I have 24 years left until retirement." The company has long been bankrupt; its AI-controlled vehicles caused mostly accidents even before the atomic bomb, and its factories simply consumed endless resources. The suit-wearing man's entire ambitious professional life was completely pointless, but his white-collar mentality apparently survives every apocalypse without major irritation. Which, of course, is what's truly shocking, absurdly funny, and probably even the truth.
süeddeutsche
