Reviews for “Quartet”

These are unauthorized translations of German-language reviews of Quartet.

Cul Tu Re, August 2024, U34 „Quartett“ – Sex, Power, and Death

So much nudity, sex, and violence in an open scenery requires courage again, and needs to carry trigger warnings. A quarter-century ago, the student theater U34 formed in Tübingen and was the seed for a nationwide network of theater enthusiasts that exists to this day. The group have now brought Heiner Müller’s “Quartet” on stage at the Tübingen Slaughterhouse. A risky undertaking. The premiere was Wednesday.

“Totally disturbing” remarked a pair at the enthusiastically received premiere, what the truly magnificent Mo Sauer - whose main job is as a schoolteacher in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Tübingen computer scientist Mike Sperber directed by Henry Toma (Hamburg) exposed their audience to (having already performed in Greifswald, Rostock, and Hamburg), a concentrate of Heiner Müller’s “Quartet”, which again adapts the scandalous - obscene, decadent, blasphemous, cynical - novel of letters “Les Liasions Dangereuses” by Choderlos de Laclos from pre-revolutionary France and which it reduces to two characters in a gleeful and maybe scornful-cynical change of sexes and roles. Black-humoured Müller always wanted comedy, even slapstick comedy in his dark pieces.

As “Dangerous Liaisons” the material came to cincemas in 1988 under the direction of Stephen Frears, and made John Malkovich as Vicomte de Valmont into a worldwde star at the side of Glenn Close/Marquise de Merteuil and Uma Thurman as seduced and abused niece Cécile, in addition Michelle Pfeiffer (Madama Tourvel). Heiner Müller’s play, really only an adaptation of the story in his own, incomparably large, mythical-associative language, is the biggest success of the dramatist and plays practically continually since its Bochum premiere in 1982 on some great German-language stage. The witty doomsayer Hiner Müller lets it take place in a pre-revolutionary aristocratic salon and in a “bunker after the third world war”.

Wrapped and trapped in in cellophane. Photo credit Martin Bernklau.

One would seemingly need to know qa bite beforehand to understand this terrific game of intrigue. The “Quartet” works however - when it’s played as intensely as by Mo Sauer and Mike Sperber - even without a clear perspective on the characters and the plot: as a distilled spectacle on sex and power far beyond the edge to violence and abuse, also about aging and then death, the essential forces of carnal human existence.

The “Dangrous Liaisons” really are a monstrously riveting and extreme cynical duel between the Marquise and the Vicomte, Müller captured this precisely and implemented it in his “Quartet”. Diabolical bets. Both, Valmont the seducer and the Merteuil the schemer wholly focussed on uninhibited pleasure, are aging and want go all-in one more time in a game completely devoid of morals, with their human objects of power and sex, the teenage virgin convent student Cécile de Volanges and the virtuous president’s wife Madame to Tourvel.

Valmont (Mike Sperber) shaves and cleans the dirtied Marquise de Merteuil (Mo Sauer) Photo credit Martin Bernklau.

The supporting roles required to drive the plot play the fiancé Gercourt and Le Président Tourvel, former lover of the Maruqise, which introduces the element of revenge into this merry-go-around of the most elementary, desolate, and deepest desires and the most wily intrigue. Of course there is also, with Laclos, with Müller and with U34 - the noble, the love. But only as an illusion that evaoprates, as misunderstanding or deceit. Sauer and Sperber sing as a special duet Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas - don’rt leve me” and dance with tender grace a Pas de deux. Antje Hoffmann and Helena Sperber elegantly styled the constumes from corsets and boots to lace lingerie, mostly in black and white.

The intimate play begins in a golden sitting tub with a naked but painted or soiled Mo Sauer as Marquise and ends in this throne-like bedet with the naked Mike Sperber who - facing voluntary death - paints or soils himself. A high-minded ring composition. In between there is much counter-carnal dressing and undressing, violance and drastic words galore. Die two actors expose themselves and the audience to “real acting” with actual blows or the wrapping of the naked victim in cellophane, which makes one involuntarily frightened for breath.

Mo Sauer and Mike Sperber as Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont in Heiner Müller’s “Quartet”. Photo credit Martin Bernklau.

It’s hard to believe that these two actors never saw an acting school from the inside, where Mo Sauer maybe put a bit more pulsating enegery and elecrifying presence on stage than her partner Mike Sperber. Not even directly addressing the audience was free from scenic concentration. At the most with the language and the quiet moments great professionals could have brought more profound craftsmanship to the table. However, the U34 actors were magnificently confident with the text, which is the basis of all freedom in acting - and the straightforward space with its direct acoustdics.

And this is what distinguishes the theater: The slightly hazy role change in Heiner Müller’s original was game and transformation, not the fatefully accepted “identity”, conscious of the role, not of the subjective nature or outer attributes. Appearance instead of being, therefore art. Ambitious amateur theater cannot come much further.