Over There *** TNT
Friday 13 March 2009 17:02 GMT
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, playwright Mark Ravenhill suggests that the merging of the two cultures and ideologies wasn’t a completely welcome – or easy – event. His initially intriguing new play (influenced by interviews conducted in Berlin and part of the Royal Court’s season of works about Germany) brings together Karl and Franz, two young men brought up on different sides of the wall.
The twist is that they’re identical twins who were separated as toddlers. Whilst their mother took Franz to grow up in the comparative consumerist opulence of the West, Karl stayed behind in the East with his socialist dad. Now, both their parents are dead (symbolism looms heavily throughout) and there is no need for passes and permits if they want to spend time together.
Karl gradually takes on more and more of his sibling’s characteristics, wearing an identical suit and becoming a second father to his little nephew (portrayed by what, from where I was sitting, looked like a bright yellow sponge – representing, presumably, a new, unfettered generation ready to soak up influences from all sides). Despite the surface advantages, though, he cannot find contentment in an overwhelmingly materialistic, reunified society.
The performances from real life twins Luke and Harry Treadaway are excellent as, right from their first brief meeting in 1986, they eerily finish each other’s sentences. But, by the time they’d stripped to their respective red and green underpants (with Karl’s body smeared in a surfeit of ketchup and chocolate cream cakes) Ravenhill’s need to shock diminishes what has gone before.
Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1 (020 7565 5000) to March 21st (£10-£25)
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