At turns hysterically unhinged and eerily poignant, Schicklgruber is a masterful, darkly comic puppet play covering the last days of Hitler and his entourage in the Führerbunker. Having originally written the play as a one-man show over two decades ago, the pioneering puppeteer Neville Tranter has now ceded its performance to his protégé Nikolaus Habjan and collaborator Manuela Linshalm, while staying on as co-director.
The piece’s reigning atmosphere is one of domestic hysteria, laced with terror as the Red Army closes in. Eva Braun, brilliantly played by Linshalm, mischievously delights in toying with the sexually repressed Goebbels and dreams of becoming a mother. The ever-loyal Goebbels touchingly believes that just one good radio speech by Hitler would rouse the encircled German troops to victory. He also prepares to kill his six children, should that not pan out.
However, the startlingly expressive puppetry of Linshalm and Habjan is not always put to good use, too often falling into broad caricature. More compelling are the figures with subtle idiosyncrasies that penetrate beyond obvious jokes. Take Death, a two-metre-tall yellow Grinch with a Día de los Muertos mask who effortlessly weaves French, English and Russian into his German.
Hitler, Death says, has given him a lot of work to do. He attempts magic tricks but can only conjure a dead bird from his hat – one of the moments of sly surprise that just manages to offset Schicklgruber’s overreliance on garnering cheap laughs.
- Deutsches Theater, Schumannstr. 13A, Mitte, Jul 11-12, German with English surtitles, details.
