If you’re looking for a break from the countless summer blockbusters, Germany’s English theatre scene is serving up a dose of heady dramas this summer – from Frankfurt’s staging of Beckett’s labyrinthine masterpiece Waiting for Godot to Dirt, the harrowing story of an Iraqi immigrant in America, which is playing in Berlin.

Also worth checking out is English Theatre Berlin’s presentation of the celebrated British author Alan Bennett’s monologues Talking Heads. Like the perennially-pained characters of Raymond Carver, Bennett’s protagonists are inevitably trapped in unfulfilling, yet seemingly inescapable, situations. And like Carver’s stories, the perverse pleasure of watching Bennett’s plays is in hoping against hope that his characters will shrug off the banality of their lives and start anew – even though, from the outset, we know this to be practically impossible. Embroiling oneself in this Catch-22, though sometimes difficult, is always rewarding. Certainly a good break from those hot summer nights.

BERLIN

English Theatre Berlin    

http://www.etberlin.de/

The Lab by Alexander Adams

TWISTED: A man walks into a bar – stop me if you’ve heard this one before. He’s on his way home from work and he stops for a beer. He decides to buy one for a woman there. Things develop and he realises he has got more – and less – than he expected. As the evening unfolds his (and our) assumptions are turned upside down as he is forced to confront a dark secret. A black, startling and funny insight into, deceit, self-deceit and hidden desire.

June 7 / 19-20 / 23-24 / 26-27 / 30 / July 1-5 at 8pm

Talking Heads by Alan Bennett

In an article to celebrate his 75th birthday on May 9th, The Guardian called Alan Bennett "a national treasure." But Bennett, who just recently had a huge bestseller in Germany with his novella, The Uncommon Reader (Die souveräne Leserin), is more than that – he is one of Britain’s greatest writers. Period.
 
Talking Heads is a series of monologues, poignant yet hilarious pieces peeling back the veneer of respectability to revel in – and of course laugh at – the private foibles of everyday life. These tales of loneliness and eccentricity range from hilariously funny to bitingly satirical to poignantly reflective, sometimes all in the same monologue. Alan Bennett wrote the first six pieces in the mid 1980s for BBC-TV, where they became a huge success and received several prestigious awards. More than ten years later, another six monologues followed, and this time Alan Bennett confronted his protagonists with severer problems like murder, child molestation, or a husband who is into S/M. English Theatre Berlin presents three of the later pieces: The Outside Dog, Playing Sandwiches and Nights in the Gardens of Spain.

Friday June 19 (Premiere) at 8pm / Sat 20 / Tue 23 / Wed 24 / Fri 26 & Sat 27 / Tue 30
Wednesday July 1- Sunday July 5

Check out Expatica's review of the play: Tales from the side of the stage: Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’

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