This one-woman show starring Aysima Ergün really does – as its name, “elbow,” suggests – throw some ‘bows. Under the direction of Studio Я artistic leader Murat Dikenci, the play confronts its audience with a striking tale of intersectional rage and woe, adapted from Fatma Aydemir’s novel of the same name.
The drama centres around Hazal, a lost first-generation German with (Turkish) Migrationshintergrund, who has resigned to working part-time at a relative’s bakery and whose half-hearted applications for other jobs keep getting rejected.
It all comes to a head on her 18th birthday, when a night out with her best friend Elma turns disastrous. They don’t get into the club. They’re harassed by a student at the U-Bahn station. And all their rage and frustration with their situation break upon him. They beat him to death, shoving his body onto the tracks.
Hazal then flees to Istanbul to live with Mehmet, her internet crush (and a junkie). The compounding insults of life are only made bearable to watch by Ergün’s undeniable charisma – and, depending on your tolerance for hamminess, moments of comedy.
Only at the last moment of the play, when Hazal comes clean to her aunt in Istanbul, reflecting on the act of violence that ruined her life, do we understand this depressive spiral: it was a story of negative agency, a tale of sound and fury, signifying that there could have been so much more to Hazal in a nation and society where she could have had access to more opportunity. Sometimes you’d like to turn away, but Ellbogen strikes with force. ★★★
- Maxim Gorki Theater, Am Festungsgraben 2, Mitte, on Oct 4, 7 and 30, in German with English surtitles, details.
