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’

Monkeyshines by mp

Monkeyshines is performed by a metal Monkey, who offers soothsaying, telling voodoo futures with the bones of a wild pig. She will usurp the stage attempting to play with its magic, while proposing we all hop the picket fence between actors and audience. She promises an unusual theatre experience.

July 8 - 11 at 8pm

My Father’s War by Robert Ford, an American Season reading

My Father’s War recounts the World War II experiences of Art Herzberg, a Jewish kid from Chicago’s North Side. Reminiscent of both Catch 22 and Broadway's Journey's End, Art’s daughter, actress Amy Herzberg, literally steps into her father’s combat boots to portray a chain of events both farcical and poignant.
 
July 14 - 18 at 8pm

Dirt by Robert Schneider

Presented by New York’s Dreck Productions and performed by Christopher Domig (Outstanding Actor Award-Fringe New York)

An Iraqi immigrant tells his story. His name is Sad. He lives here illegally. At night he walks our streets and sells roses. He loves to speak our language but nobody listens. Will you?
 
July 14 - 18 at 8pm 


Schaubuehne

www.schaubuehne.de

Once a month, the well-known German director Thomas Ostemeier presents one of his notable productions with English surtitles. While some might think it is distracting, they actually take very little away from the power of the plays. Other productions are also shown in English or with surtitles.


Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen

Hedda Gabler, the daughter of a general, has just married. Her husband Jörgen Tesman, an upcoming historian, is about to be appointed a professor.

In this play, first staged at the Hoftheater in Munich in 1891, Ibsen shows an attack on bourgeoisie from the inside. Although it is difficult today to define the bourgeoisie as one single class with shared values, all the bourgeois desires and fears, which have been controlling, regulating and deforming biographies since the 19th century, are established in all financial social classes today. Fear of social decline has become our collective leitmotif. Once more, we are ready for the challenge and cheek of a Hedda Gabler.

June 13 at 8pm, with English surtitles

Check out Expatica's review of Hedda Gabler: Car-crash Theatre

Henrik Ibsen’s famous proto-feminist, Hedda Gabler, is playing the Berlin stage one last time this summer. Expatica columnist Jacinta Nandi-Pietschmann gets the inside scoop.

Schaubuehne will start its new season on September 15 with the opening of a new production of "Die Nibelungen" by Friedrich Hebbel, directed by Marius von Mayenburg.

FRANKFURT

The English Theatre Frankfurt

http://english-theatre.org/

Educating Rita by Willy Russell

Frank is a professor of English whose disillusioned outlook on life drives him to the bottle. Rita is hairdresser hungry to find some meaning in life. With Frank as her tutor, Rita embarks on an Open University course and her education begins. The effects are both amusing and dramatic as her intuitive approach becomes clouded and stifled as she grapples with the problems of formal education. In her attempts to appreciate literature, Rita challenges the attitudes of traditional teaching, causing Frank to question his own understanding of his work and himself.

May 15 – July 5