• Calendar
  • Tickets
• People
• Archive
• Service
• Open Letter

 

Kaputt

A European tour de force adapted from a novel by Curzio Malaparte

“When Germans become afraid, when that mysterious German fear begins to creep into their bones, they always arouse a special horror and pity. Their appearance is miserable, their cruelty sad, their courage silent and hopeless. And that’s when Germans start to become a threat.”

This is how the half-German Italian Kurt Erich Suckert known as Curzio Malaparte, who was raised by foster parents (“I’m proud to be a bastard!”), has diagnosed the situation seventy years ago. Once a fervent supporter of Mussolini himself, having participated in the Black Shirts’ march on Rome in 1922, Malaparte takes part in World War II as a writer-reporter and “embedded officer” of sorts. The stuff he writes as frontline reporter for Italy’s biggest newspaper Corriere della Sera later serves as material for his novel “Kaputt”.

He is as close to the annihilating, life-destroying forces of the front industry as he is to the decadent circles of the fascist political elite. Due to his proximity to the Nazis Malaparte was discredited, just like his fellow writers Ferdinand Céline, Ezra Pound, Knut Hamsun or Ernst Jünger, but the highly controversial bestselling author keeps fascinating people. În 1989 Heiner Müller wrote the introductory preface for a new edition of Malaparte’s frontline reports published as “The Volga rises in Europe”.

“Kaputt” is a panorama of the European theatre of war during the first global civil war. It tells of the history of the Germans and whatever holds their collective psyche together “in its inmost folds” beyond moral stereotypes. And what is even more terrifying is that, like a glance through a kaleidoscope, Malaparte’s egregious and uncanny visions can shed new light on our present. In times of renewed fears of a looming disaster and threat coming from the East, Frank Castorf has rediscovered and adapted the novel for the stage.

Duration: 5h, one break

  

more

With: Jeanne Balibar (Curzio Malaparte), Margarita Breitkreiz (Marioara/ Prinzessin Eugenia von Schweden), Frank Büttner (Boxlegende Max Schmeling/ im Ritual gebärender Cicillo), Georg Friedrich (Colonel Jack Hamilton), Patrick Güldenberg (Hans Frank), Britta Hammelstein (Brigitte Frank), Horst Günter Marx (Graf Augustin de Foxa), Mex Schlüpfer (Franco Vegliani), Axel Wandtke (Kaarlo Hillilä) and Harald Warmbrunn (Haraldescu)

Director: Frank Castorf
Stage Designer: Bert Neumann
Costumes: Bert Neumann
Light Design: Lothar Baumgarte
Video: Andreas Deinert, Mathias Klütz, Jens Crull, Wolfgang Urzendowsky, Christopher von Nathusius, William Minke
Dramaturgy: Sebastian Kaiser