Hamlet

Boris Nikitin

“This is not theater. And it’s not real life!” The boards on which his Hamlet is holding his great, plaintive, combative, suffering soliloquy do mean the world – and they also mean nothing. With a slinking walk, excluded but still the center of things, manic, depressive, extrovert, introvert, always too much, too close, always too true, too strong, too fragile, performer and musician Julian Meding shows us a person who – like his great Shakespearean model – is not necessarily sympathetic, not conciliatory but prickly. A poetic revolutionary: raw, confrontational, anti-social, then suddenly conciliatory, wanting to be understood. Meding’s Hamlet is not Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark: he hardly speaks a word of the famous original and yet he is a prototypical Hamlet for our times. To be or not to be, to prevaricate or to act, to belong or to remain aloof, here that is no longer a question of making a decision, it is a tension that must be withstood.
The Swiss theatermaker Boris Nikitin, a guest at Impulse last year with ‘Martin Luther Propagandastück,’ is known for his analytical view of the theater and the world. However, none of his works get under your skin so much as this account of illness, death, depression, of wanting to be different and having to be different. The role and the character we presume is real melt into each other, theatrical thinking and existential questions about life become one.
Accompanied by Cologne-based baroque musicians, Julian Meding embarks on a performative tour de force, exposing his body and his biography to the scrutiny of the audience, treading a fine line between performance and theatrical illusion, between outgoing dilettante and acting virtuoso.

Artist Talk following the performance on the 23 June

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Duration 90’

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