Frenetic Applause For Paul’s Wiggling Feet (English Translation)

“Total Fictional Lie” in the Sophiensaele

It is among the most sublime pleasures of youth to stand relaxed and drunk at the edge of the dance floor for hours and watch everyone moving themselves rhythmically. Anyone who ever loved doing that, or still does, is in good hands with the group Elevator Repair Service. Its dances are of that casualness only experts can get away with. They achieve their effect without effort, like the movements of ordinary young people acting obliviously, without any artistic intention.

This trick was at work in the Sophiensaele during the world premiere of “Total Fictional Lie”, a production commissioned by the Berliner Festwochen. It is the eighth production by the company, founded in 1991 by John Collins, ex-sound-engineer for the Wooster Group. This time Collins directed with Steve Bodow.

The story told is about famous early-60s singer Paul Anka (played by a woman). Paul is heard boasting that he shed 35 lbs to become a star. His fans are seen preparing parties, gossiping during slow dances, or proving incapable of buying religious booklets from a sales representative. And a serial murderess is justifying herself: she did it all in self-defense.

Paul’s wiggling feet make the most prominent appearance. They are all that’s visible when he delivers a perfectly sense-free speech in New York and receives frenetic applause for it. And truly, Susie Sokol’s feet are more amusing than a lot of what other people can express with their faces.

In “Cab Legs,” which Elevator Repair Service presented a few days ago in the Sophiensaele, Indian pop songs were the departure point for choreography. This time the seven-member group sets its cheerful controlled insanity to jazz melodies. If dance is freedom, sitting is imprisonment; the furniture pieces — around a white wall, the only set decoration — are subtle torture instruments: a sloping old hangdog chair, a squeaking wobbly swivelchair, and a crate that the actors squeeze into, contorting themselves absurdly.

A factor apparently “outside the art” also contributes to the success of “Total Fictional Lie”: the personality of the troupe. But even this is professionally manufactured. Because the performers are allowed their individual personalities, they come off like somebody’s jolly housemates. And so you follow their performance with the warm-hearted sympathy you would have watching friends.

But in life as in the theater, the nice ones are not always the most interesting. Pain and struggle, which sometimes help refine the pleasure of theater, are not among the offerings of the friendly travelling salesmen of ERS. A well-camoflaged insignificance prevails over it all.

translation by Scott Shepherd