On Sunday night, the Berliner ensemble simultaneously presented two plays by Lessing: Nathan the Wise, which I had already seen, played the main stage, while The Jews was offered nextdoor at the Probebuehne, the rehearsal space which is used as a studio theatre, an unusual white box, at least for this production.
Nathan and The Jews are very different plays: Nathan has a historical setting, in medieval Jerusalem, The Jews is set in Lessing’s contemporary Germany. Nathan is a verse play, The Jews is written in prose. Most importantly perhaps, Nathan aspires to the lofty status of an Ideendrama, while The Jews is only a Lustspiel, a “fun play”. (Back then a German author could still write a play called The Jews and call it a comedy). Both plays, however, deal with religious intolerance, and particularly with the treatment of the Jews, an issue that Lessing held very strong views about. Both plays were attacked: The Jews was accused of being “unlikely”, which might seem like a silly thing to say of a play in our postmodern world, but classicist vresaimblance was still the house style in Germany at the time.
The plays are similar in more ways than that, however, and these productions bring out the key similarity. The token Jewish character in each of the plays (Nathan and the “Traveler”) is played with naturalistic reserve, while the several other characters (Christians and Muslims in Nathan, aristocrats and lackies in The Jews) are grotesquely exaggerated. Even the costumes of the two Jews most nearly resemble what passes for “normal” clothing: The “Traveler” wears normally cut trousers while the other men in The Jews appear in breeches.
The result is that the two jews seem much more approachable and human to the audience, encouraging identification and empathy. If the plays are ment to argue that Jews are humans, the direction seems to suggest that they are the most human of humans. The strategy pays off: When each play ends with its Jewish everyman left alone on stage in a spotlight, while a merry mob of gentiles marches off laughing (at him?), Lessing’s contrived conciliatory endings seem troubling.
Of course the actors have to rely on grosss stereotypes to achieve that goal, but a lot of the comedy, in both cases, comes out of their most exaggerated moments. The two women in particular are irresistibly funny: Hanna Juergens is the naive ingenue, while Therese Affolter is her wiser and very horny maid. Sehr lust-ig!
