Man To Man, Edinburgh review: 'Tilda Swinton's performance is desperately poignant'
Tilda Swinton gives an extraordinary, brave and beautiful performance in Manfred Karge’s modern classic, writes Joyce McMillan
Man To Man, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★★★
It’s the strangeness I remember, when I search my memory for impressions of the 1987 UK premiere of Manfred Karge’s modern German classic, Man To Man. In one of the tiny studio spaces at the old Traverse Theatre in the Grassmarket, with a then almost unknown young Tilda Swinton crouched alone on stage within touching distance of the audience, it wasn’t only the Bowie-like gender-bending flair of the performance that commanded attention, although that was arresting enough.
There was also a mighty bird-like energy that went somewhere beyond the human, a skin half-plastered in a scrofula-like white paste that seemed both disguise and a mark of mutilation or death - and a folding and unfolding of unbelievably long limbs that somehow recalled a broken Anglepoise lamp.
And it’s good to report that that sense of strangeness survives intact; as 39 years on, Tilda Swinton returns to the Traverse stage to tell once again the story of Ella Gericke, a woman living in eastern Germany who, back in the hungry 1930s, adopts her young husband Max Gericke’s name and identity, after his untimely death from cancer, so that she can also take on his job as an industrial crane driver.
It’s not that this new Royal Court and Berliner Ensemble production is identical in every way to that first edition, four decades ago. Stephen Unwin still directs, Bunny Christie still designs, and Ben Ormerod is still the show’s lighting designer; but Ella’s 90 minute reflection on the tumultuous history of Germany from 1930 to the present day - seen from the perspective of a someone with every reason to keep her head down, to avoid politics, and to stick to her daily routine of work, beer and schnapps - now comes on a bigger stage, with brilliantly disturbing new video projections by Matt Powell, and sound design by Elena Pena.
And most importantly, Swinton herself has changed; still strange, still physically striking and dauntless, still dressed in Max Gericke’s red Y-fronts and workman’s jacket - but now full of desperately poignant depths of suppressed womanly energy and sweetness, reflected in the fragments of old German fairytales, and of the Gretchen story from Faust, that provide an aching counterpoint to the brusque masculine stride and gruff male chat that usually carries her around the stage.
In political terms, “Max” Gericke represents the kind of exploited and “left behind” working man who might have backed or at least tolerated Hitler once, until he saw the carnage he brought, and who is now once again vulnerable to far right propaganda and bombast.
In this new staging, though - and in Swinton’s extraordinary, brave and beautiful performance - Max/Ella also becomes a figure of even wider resonance; a latterday Mother Courage with no children, who somehow lives through her terrifying times, but at a huge cost - and eventually becomes a living, breathing symbol of the alienation, not only from others but from our own true selves, that tragically limits lives, and is still the price of survival for millions, across a heartless world.
Man To Man is at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until 7 November.
The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today
Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.