Berlin's stages are breathing life back into and enhancing the art of the variety show
In the heart of Berlin, the world of theatre is brimming with innovation and a nod to the past. A new wave of productions is captivating audiences with a technique known as variety theatre, a form that first gained popularity around the turn of the 19th century.
One such production is Katharina Stoll and Isabelle Redfern's "Sistas!" at the Volksbühne. Initially appearing as a psychological family drama, the play delves deeper, incorporating elements of variety theatre. Square dancing, opera singing interludes, and a moment of escalating sword swallowing are just a few of the surprises that await audiences. The play also builds on the inspiration from Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters" and explores themes of inheritance, Blackness, and Germanness.
The second half of "Sistas!" opens with a Powerpoint presentation discussing some of its influences, providing a fascinating insight into the play's conception.
Meanwhile, at the Berliner Ensemble, Lena Brasch's one-woman performance, "It's Britney, Bitch," offers a unique take on variety theatre. The production breaks up monologues with slowed-down versions of Britney Spears songs, creating a critical distance for reflection. The performance culminates in a captivating recreation of Spears' iconic 'Oops!...I Did It Again,' complete with the red jumpsuit, which brought the house down.
The play "Fiddler! A Musical" at HAU in December is another postmodern homage to a classic, this time "Fiddler on the Roof." The production goes beyond the original and explores the "tradition" of Jewish performance, ranging from 19th-century vaudeville through Broadway spectaculars to the preoccupations of Berlin's diverse, vibrant performers today.
Variety theatre demands that the audience think and figure out how the spectacle that appears before them sits with what came before, interrupting the forward movement of traditional narrative. This technique of estrangement is not limited to the stage but exists across our lives, with examples including flicking through TikTok or watching YouTube.
The piece is hardly an outlier; it is simply the most explicit iteration of the modern variety theatre that characterises a lot of what's on stage in this city. Vaudeville, as it was called in the UK, or "vaudeville" in the US, pushed theatre's variousness to extremes, capturing the experience of the modern city's colliding worlds, as scholar Robert M. Lewis has noted.
The director and author of the play "Sistas!" as a Volksbühne production with references to the variety show format is not identified in the provided search results. However, the impact of variety theatre on Berlin's contemporary stage is undeniable, asking the audience to reflect on the logic of the narrative on stage and, perhaps, our lives.
