Out of the simple conceit of making a mixtape, Hakan Savaş Mican unfurls a political-personal tragedy. The terminally-ill protagonist, played by Taner Şahintürk, will not live to see his child born. He might not have had that much to do with the child anyway, as it was kind of accidental with the mother. But he desperately wants to leave this German child something, even if he will never be able to teach the kid Turkish.
It’s perhaps not the most original conceit, but the portrait proves poignant. Through his favourite music, his life – all the errors of his conservative youth during Turkey’s dirty war against leftists and Kurds – opens up. He is no hero, but his life, cut off too soon, could have become something else.
There is all the pathos of a path that could have gone another way. Alles wird schön sein. might be a chamber quartet to the symphony that was Mican’s absolutely arresting Unser Deutschlandmärchen, but the piece still features moving music, as performed by Merve Akyıldız, Peer Neuman, Emre Aksızoğlu and Şahintürk.
As the show opens up into politics, leaving the audience with scenes of protest and violence on the screens, it asks those in the chairs to reflect on their own responsibility. How will “everything be beautiful”, for the living and those who might yet be born, if the audience itself doesn’t do anything to make it so?
- Maxim Gorki Theater, Am Festungsgraben 2, Mitte, Oct 6, German with English surtitles, details
