A cherry on top

Written by Germany’s Botho Strauss and directed by Benedict Andrews, Gross Und Klein ‘big and small’ is a startling tale of one woman’s quest for self renewal and affection. First appearing on the scene back in 1978 before the fall of the Berlin wall, Gross Und Klein has since wowed audiences with its surrealism, humour and poignant ideas.    

The play begins in Morocco where the always optimistic Lotte – played by Cate Blanchett – is sitting in a hotel dining room listening to the conversation of two men outside. The random mumblings of two complete strangers is so interesting and brilliantly engaging for Lotte that one can’t help but wonder, does this woman have a life of her own? The blatant answer to which is no. Lotte is a lost soul, a wanderer and idealist who cannot seem to find her proper place in the world. After Lotte is rejected by her husband yet again and the disintegration of her marriage kicks in she desperately tries to cling to human connection wherever she can find it. Stalking old school friends, meeting strangers in the street, eavesdropping through people’s windows and even waiting in a doctor’s office without an appointment, are several attempts at human connection that Lotte makes which surprise, surprise result in further rejection.

Like Lotte herself, Gross Und Klein is a hard play to appreciate and make sense of at times. Running for just over 3 hours, the premise is a mixture of cultural, emotional and physical psychoses. On the one hand Lotte is viewed as a peculiar nobody that is rejected by her cultural surroundings; but is she perhaps working hard to make her surroundings reject her in an attempt to become an outsider? Much like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Lotte suddenly finds herself struggling to survive in a world that is so foreign and confusing to her.
While the comical scenes are very funny, the fragmented nature of all of the scenes left the audience with a few unanswered questions. If it weren’t for the brilliance of Blanchett and the strong accompanying performers (Anita Hegh, Lynette Curran, Robert Menzies and Martin Vaughan to name a few) the play might have been viewed as a whole lot of confusing and pointless dribble.      

The despondent nature of Lotte is captured superbly by Blanchett who single-handedly put the cherry on top of another successful Sydney Theatre Company programme. Being the most highly anticipated performers of the year, Blanchett did very little to disappoint her fans. The amount of empathy she was able to achieve from the audience through her incredible physicality and structure of emotions was impressive. Her ability to handle the comical elements of the play just as flawlessly as the emotional ones was rewarding to the entire performance. While the supporting cast made only a few short appearances they were all cleverly cast and created an interesting menagerie of characters.

Lighting and staging designers Nick Schlepped and Johannes Schutz worked together brilliantly to create a rich yet minimalist set and lighting structure that was rewarding to the performance. Schlepped’s moveable set was cleverly designed so that each piece served a specific purpose and seemed to grow either smaller or larger as Lotte’s emotions reached extreme highs and lows. Shutz’s lighting served wonders throughout the entire play, but his piece de resistance was the last few minutes of the performance when Blanchett appeared to be diminishing in size as she wafted to the back of the stage through the use of some sort of magic lighting trick that he impressed audiences with.

Gross Und Klein is a clever yet perplexing play that has the ability to either thoroughly entertain or confuse audiences.

Haylie Pretorius

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