Luxembourg can only be endured with enough white wine

Today you can no longer make jokes – someone always feels disadvantaged or discriminated against. You may not always take life too seriously. Does an old white man speak here?

Yes and no; It is the award -winning Luxembourg author Guy Helminger, who reflects on himself and life, the world as it and is. Everything is driven to the extreme and not every word may be taken for bare coin. This becomes clear in the first few minutes of « E Kuerze Monologue Iwwer Eng Laang Zäit ».

And that Guy Helminger, who wrote the piece, can hardly be imposed on the two Helminger brothers, the label of the old, white man should be aware of everyone who is familiar with the literature of the two writers.

Rather, the younger Helminger takes everything and everyone in his text: Luxembourg politician, the Woke culture, the patriotic way of thinking, fundamentalists, false moralists, the (Luxembourg) identity and, above all, themselves. A provocative satire that takes criticism of the hypocritical society without sounding arrogant or know-it-all.

A life between white wine and books

« E Kuerze monologue iwwer Eng Laang Zäit », in an original staging The « Prix Arts et Lettres of the Grand-Ducal Institute » award winner Liss Scholtescelebrated on Wednesday evening in the Kasemattentheater premiere. A monologue that is not a real monologue – after all, there are three actors on stage.

Philippe Thelen slips into the role of Guy Helminger, an « Ale Grommer » who now lives under the stage of the Kasemattentheater in a chamber. Accordingly, the stage design (Soojin Oh) is unusual. Unlike usual, the viewers sit on the actual theater stage, while the auditorium acts as a place of the drama.

In the middle of the hall there is a stage scaffolding, which is used on the one hand as an increased platform on which the author’s memories take place. A mixture of fantasms and real past. On the other hand, under this scaffolding is the conceivable area of ​​life in Helminger, i.e. the present, so to speak, the reality. A mattress with a sleeping bag, a suitcase, small stack of (self -made) books and over half a dozen white wine bottles « decorate » the ground.

The stage design is deliberately rudimentary – as incomplete and fragmentary as Guy Helminger’s autobiography, which he indicates based on his monologue. But be careful, the additional title for his piece is not for nothing « all autobiography ass leagues ». And with that the writer not only alludes to his own. And anyway, isn’t identity a construct anyway?

Successful acting performance

Paradoxically, Philippe Thelen gives an exceptionally successful, nagging Guy Helminger in the checkered shirt and Chinese. With every sip of white wine, he drinks and talks further and further into rage and melancholy. Here it is cheated when roaring – and in between, a sarcastic, even cynical comment slips out again. He constantly breaks through the fourth wall, addresses the viewers directly, even joins them.

Jil Devresse and Brigitte Urhausen embody spirits from Helminger’s past: his parents, passed love affairs, youth friends, strangers from afar. They constantly change the roles and thus the costumes. Both provide energetic and convincing performance – you can overlook a small text giver on the part of Devresse.

Ultimately, however, you hardly trust your eyes when the women in a bait and chinos appear in front of the audience: Are there about three Guy Helminger on stage? Or are there different fractions of his identity? And suddenly you ask yourself the question: What does me actually make?

In « E Kuerze Monologue Iwwer Eng Laang Zäit » Guy Helminger – not to be confused with Nico Helminger, which some politicians have already happened – not only with the construct of identity, but also questions any ideological ways of thinking. Because if everyone would put their beliefs aside for a short moment, people could finally start talking to each other.