What’s cooking at this Ristorante?
|
An award-winning observational comedy from a reputed professional German group
|
Ristorante Immortale
August 11, 7.15 p.m., The Music Academy
A theatre experience that feels like poetry. This is clearly a production woven together by a kaleidoscope of artistes, dramatists and dreamers.
Not surprisingly, Berlin-based Familie Flöz — a slick, professional crew — comprises an international pool of, what they call, ‘theatre makers’ – actors, musicians, dancers, directors, mask-, light- and costume designers, dramatic advisors “and other good souls from ten nations.”
Their working philosophy, as a result, is both unique and effective. Each play is developed in a collective working process, they say, awakening “a new universe inhabited by characters and stories that cleared their path from obscurity to light.” The group places an emphasis on untiring rediscovery of century-old disciplines such as acting, mask theatre, dance, clownery, acrobatics, magic, and improvisation. The award-winning play has been staged numerous times and in various cities all over Europe.
“Ristorante Immortale,” says director Michael Vogel, “is a state of mind: despite everything, you go ahead!” The Guardian called the show “deceptively simple but is based on great skill and terrific obs
ervational comedy,” going to state, “Like a waiter in a really good restaurant, it is eager to please.”
Set somewhere between heaven and hell, in the middle of the universe and yet in the middle of nowhere, “Ristorante Immortale” is a micro cosmos that unfailingly opens its doors every day.
This is a place without meaning, but with an untiring staff. It features a young, naive newcomer, who hopes to herald in a new era: a vain ambitious headwaiter; the boss, who valiantly carries all responsibility and the senior waiter – almost part of the furniture – who should have retired long ago but is bound to it by his laziness. And then, there’s the fat female chef, who, like a messenger from another world lives behind the serving hatch in the kitchen. Just as the days over here seem to endlessly turn in circles, so do the characters. In a world where life pivots around itself, a weird labyrinth of relationships, fears and dreams develops. This restaurant is the destiny of each of its inhabitants – their dreams, their memories, themselves.
The synopsis of this and the other play has been partly sourced from material provided by the respective groups.
Michael Vogel
DIRECTOR'S CUT
Since the very concept of “Ristorante Immortale” is rather fluid (the restaurant that never opens but never closes, has a staff that never serves but never sleeps, where you can eat your fill but go back for more:
The Guardian), was the play difficult to create and conceptualise?
The initial idea a restaurant where no more customers come in, or maybe never came. A poetic place, detached from the world... The contrast was given by the energy of the staff, which is divided in an archetypical hierarchy, from the boss till the new young waiter.
We started rehearsals with a pretty realistic set, and then we make it simpler and simpler till the point where we had only the four doors left. That became the allegory of the four stages of life (youth, maturity, old age and death) and of the four seasons of the year. The cook as the supervisor, the red curtain as a passage to the past and future. The plot and the discovery of the characters happened during the rehearsals phase.
To what do you attribute its success? What is it about the characters that touches audiences?
The characters are the main elements of the show. They are very archetypical figures, they fail and suffer and that makes them human and close to each of us.
The audience love characters who fail because they/we also have the fear of failing. Laughing frees us from our own fears, and “relaxes” the soul.
It is amazing to see how masks still touch and move the audience. The mask is old as the theatre. The success of our theatre says a lot about the still alive love of the audience for the transformation and the ancient, simple style of the comedy.
Would you consider European theatre very different from theatre in other parts of the world? Is your play - in particular - global or springing from a particular place?
Our theatre has been influenced by different traditions of the European theatre: commedia dellarte, clown, Greek theatre. On the other hand, the European theatre of the last century has been strongly influenced by the Asian tradition like Kabuki, Non or Kathakali. And theatre groups like Theatre du Soleil, Complicite, though Brecht and Strehler were already inspired by the art of Asian masks.
