Hans Dunkelberg

Michael Kramer is Gerhart Hauptmann's reincarnation of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. The lady adored by the suicide victim appears as less adorable than the one in Goethe's version, but it's questionable if such details matter too much. Like Werther, the work altogether rather means poetry than drama or prose. It's a sort of a ritual text, profoundly in the sense of the notion of Novalis that any literature can be understood as an extension to the Bible. Events visible on the stage stay restrained in their action, the action as if scurrying alongside. Great, heavy, solemn word in the end grows out of a dialog that from the beginning has entertained thanks to utmost naturalness, wit, and rhythmicism.