MR. BROUČEK’S EXCURSIONS – BERLIN
★★★★★☆
Photo Arno Declair
REVIEW HR. BROUČEK’S EXCURSIONS: RARE JANÁČEK OPERA SURPRISES AT THE STATE OPERA
The esteemed Canadian director Robert Carsen has created a heavily modernized and highly entertaining staging of Leos Janáček’s ‘unknown’ operatic comedy Mr. Brouček’s Excursions. A rare gem of original musical theatre that surprises an enthusiastic audience at the Staatsoper Unter Den Linden in Berlin.
The show is full of festive performances, affectionate satire and comedy in a well-organised staging, but is also a political/historical statement with roots in Czech history that leaves your smile freezing in the finale when a Russian tank rolls onto the stage and smashes the entire set.
Photo: Jenny Bohse
Mr. Brouček’s Excursions moves with considerable verve from the drunken title character’s favourite pub to the moon and back again via the Czech Spring of 1968, when a soft liberalization of the Stalinist/Communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia was crushed with a heavy hand by Soviet tanks and troops.
The ‘socialism with a human face’ that head of state Alexander Dubcek tried to sneak in through the back door was not something Moscow had asked for.
Photo Arno Declair
Czech Leos Janáček actually wrote nine operas, but is best known for Katya Kabanova, Jenufa, The Case of Makropulos and The Cunning Little Fox. Brouček is a lesser-known work, written in several instalments from 1908-1917, and through the intervention of a few too many librettists, it is torn in many directions and difficult to find the common thread. A meandering course that seems to be encapsulated in the alcoholic character of the protagonist.
Nevertheless, it is highly entertaining to follow the journey of the anti-hero Mr Brouček. Mr Brouček’s journey, which is initially intercut with large video projections of authentic, historical footage from the Apollo 11 mission, moves from the local pub to the moon in a spaceship built from large brass kettles for the good Czech beer!
Photo Arno Declair
Up there, he meets friends and enemies from the usual social circle before cutting to a bizarre scene titled Moonstock ‘68, a replica of the iconic Woodstock festival.
Here we meet the entire ensemble disguised as a sea of bodacious sixties freaks in wild flower power costumes, led by a lovely Bob Dylan clone who seduces the crowd with cool karma, guitar and flower garlands.
What’s really going on is hard to tell at times, but the whole thing is, among other things, a love story that unfolds in several layers and dimensions simultaneously.
Photo Arno Declair
The music is only partly Janáček as we know him. The large, cinematic soundscapes seem to be pushed into the background by a more circus-orientated composition, which no doubt inspired the joyful staging. A festive romp that is not always characterized by a self-explanatory narrative.
The silliness ends abruptly in the second act when the title character returns to earth, specifically to the pub in Prague where it all began and where nothing is as it used to be.
Events soon shift to the Czech spring of 1968, when liberal political developments were stopped by Russian tanks in the streets of Prague.
Photo Arno Declair
Now the story continues as an underground resistance drama, where the love story is angled into a freedom struggle with secret meetings, loaded guns and uprisings in the streets.
A rebellion that is famously crushed but finds a kind of moral revenge at the Ice Hockey World Championship in Stockholm in 1969, just a few months after the Russian troops invaded.
Suddenly, the stage is populated by opera-singing ice hockey players in full kit, wearing the iconic jerseys from when Czechoslovakia beat the invincible Soviet champion team 2-0 and 4-3 at the same finals. Half a million Czechs took to the streets of Prague after the second victory and the street fighting flared up again.
Photo Arno Declair
The victories, the anger and the will to resist remain with the Czechs to this day. You have to be blind and deaf not to realize that it’s all about Ukraine.
The music is now morphed into Janáček as we know him, with large, color-saturated timbres that cement the mood as Brouček is back in his tavern from what could have been another drunken dream, until a Russian tank suddenly rushes onto the stage and smashes the entire set, before everything goes black with a final ominous flash.
A deeply original and strongly executed musical drama production of superior, professional caliber that scores five stars from GOT TO SEE THIS.
