DIE UNSICHERHEIT DER SACHLAGE

Jan is a terrorist. Or so he claims. Whenever he stands at a crossroads, cars crash into each other. He is responsible for the explosion at the newspaper office and the fire at the headquarters of the airport opponents. And he has the man hoovering in the cemetery on his conscience too, struck down for ever with his bare hand. Or so he believes.

"Listen. I can't make sense of any of it any more. Everything's slipping away from me. All I know is that I'm dangerous and you have to help me do something about it. Lock me up. Blindfold me. Waterboard me. I'll be grateful for anything, as long as you don't send me back out there!"

For once again, Philipp Löhle's main character is an odd fellow. Like Gospodin (in „Genannt Gospodin“) and Mörchen (in „Die Kaperer“), Jan is a tragicomic hero, the misunderstood dropout type who settles into the world he has been thrown into in his very own way.

Waiting for the big leap.

But Jan is fighting neither against capitalism (like Gospodin) nor for the environment (like Mörchen), but at first for a newspaper column and later against himself. After a row with his girlfriend, he lives on the street, out of a suitcase. And everything he observes there he simply has to record, as a good journalist: "We don't even notice any more how insane the world we live in has become."

PRESS
TIROLER TAGESZEITUNG (10 April 2013)

DISTURBED GLANCES AT AN ABSURD WORLD
Jan has a suspicion. He believes he is a terrorist. He may not know what he is fighting for, but there is no doubt that his fight is a bloody one. At least not for him. But the situation – as the title of Philip Löhle's play already says – is uncertain. What holds true in pop songs applies here too: anything is possible, nothing is certain.
Jan has been left by his girlfriend Jule. Two close friends with whom he briefly stays also throw him out. So he lives out of a suitcase and wants to turn his experiences into a column for a local magazine. Whether anything was ever published, we don't know, for an explosion razes the newspaper building to the ground. Before that, the office of a citizens' action group went up in flames, and mysterious deaths are reported regularly. Jan was always nearby, but nobody takes his suspicion that he is responsible for the disasters seriously. He hasn't got over the break-up, some say. Life on the street is to blame for Jan's state, say others. There will be no clarity even at the end.
Christian Himmelbauer's production of "Die Unsicherheit der Sachlage" allows itself no certainties. There are only vague hints – and a protagonist (Philip Rudig), who gives the spreading madness an increasingly disturbed face.
Rudig is the centre of the play. Around him, his fellow actors arrange themselves in playfully changing roles (Christian Unterberger, Michel Heil and Caroline Hochfelner). Above all,Hochfelner's,ageing expert in historical near-inventions stays in the memory. But "Die Unsicherheit der Sachlage" thrives not only on a strong ensemble; it also impresses with a wonderfully over-the-top penchant for absurd constellations and precisely placed punchlines. The idea of not squeezing the play into a proscenium stage but staging it so that it quite literally takes over the space also works well(set and costumes: Manuela Müller). (jole)