by Jens-Martin Eriksen
After “Winter at Dawn” and “Finland”, this is the third working encounter with Danish author Jens-Martin Eriksen. He is making his latest play DER PROZESS GEGEN MALARPARTE available to the fringe ensemble for its first presentation to an audience. For the original staged reading, translator Jörg Scherzer produced a German translation close to the time the first version of the play was written. The staged reading also serves Jens-Martin Eriksen to review this version, after which he continues to work on the piece.
The chamber play THE TRIAL AGAINST MALAPARTE is a farce: a governor-general, a writer and two SS officers make up the quartet on which Eriksen cleverly and with wicked wit plays through the weaknesses and manipulability of man. He ventures right into the heart of darkness, finds Shakespearean plots, ponders God and Satan, and is relentless when it comes to man’s hubris. Vanity, cynicism, blind obedience come to light and finally one wonders what free will is actually about. A tremendous game, a wicked game.
With dry, cynical humor, Eriksen brings the twisted logic of the functionaries of a fascist regime to the stage. The fringe ensemble’s staged reading is as lively as a through-staged play.
General-Anzeiger Bonn
THE PROCESS AGAINST MALAPARTE is supported by the City of Bonn, the Ministry for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sports of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Danish Art Council.