Marius von Mayenburg

Something is wrong with Kurt. He doesn’t want to talk anymore, he definitely won’t play ball with his Dad. He just wants to set things on fire. It’s not pleasant, but it’s probably only puberty. And isn’t it nice that he and his sister are getting closer and closer? Olga is bound to be a good influence on him, especially since she can introduce him to her boyfriend Paul, that nice normal boy with a motorbike.

But things are getting worse instead. Soon the siblings aren’t coming down for meals, their clothes smell of petrol and Paul, coldly dumped after his bike broke down, is making hateful, dirty insinuations about the kind of relationship Olga and Kurt really have. If only there was something Mom and Dad could do! Still, it’s nice to have something to talk about. And surely it’ll all pass when they get a little older.

Marius von Mayenburg’s trendsettning play swept like a wildfire across Europe ten years ago, and – along with the early plays of Schimmelpfennig and Gieselmann - started a new way of looking at society and family on stage. The family unit is here presented as mainly a symptom of their times, a pathology that is bound to destroy its members through conformism or violence. But a dark understated humor is also trademark for these plays, even in the most drastic situations.

Fireface, which I read for the first time in almost ten years, is still elegant in its form. The short dense scenes, often taking place between the dramatic events rather than in them, and the short monologues addressing the audience almost like storytelling, still feel very contemporary. It’s no doubt this play (among others) has been vital to how much of the best new drama (from Germany and other places) is written today. But it hasn’t aged entirely well. It seems to be a little too drastic, too full of gesture. It’s going for effect and revulsion where subtlety could have done a just as good job. In all its understated matter-of-factness, it comes across just a little too loud. Still, a modern classic worthy of it’s status, and I enjoyed reading it again.… (lisätietoja)