The Pigeons

Overview

In its fleeting 70 minutes, David Gieselmann's The Pigeons will have you feeling like you've been slapped with a pickled herring. The German farce opens on an office Christmas party. It's also a ritzy living room, a restaurant and a psychiatrist's couch, among all else. The action moves with the pace of an Aaron Sorkin-orchestrated walk-and-talk — one walk-and-talking over space and time.

Mercifully, the assembled players have clear, if conflicting, agendas: Business mogul Robert Bertrand (Laurence Coy) wants to orchestrate his own disappearance, his wife Gerlinde (Lyn Pierse) wants to move to Liguria, his son Helmar (Tom Stokes) wants to play Scrabble and foil his father, Holger Voss (Garth Holcombe) wants to quit his job, Natalie Voss (Ashley Ricardo) wants him to climb the career ladder (and to control her own anger), psychiatrist Dr Erich Asendorf (Fayssal Bazzi) wants to help her control her anger as well as sleep with her but not necessarily remember her name or how to tell her apart from his other patients (also mostly in the party), Heidrun Reichert (Paige Gardiner) wants to spice up the work day by emotionally tormenting Holger and sneaky Silja van der Vries (Clare Blumer) wants money and sometimes other things.

This English language translation by Maja Zade (dramaturg at Berlin's Schaubuhne Theatre, who brought their Hamlet here earlier this year) has only previously been performed as a reading at London's Royal Court, making this Griffin Independent production it's first proper staging. And this is some staging. It takes a deft touch just to deliver this play with sense, and director Sarah Giles (fresh out of some assistant directorships and Red Stitch's That Face in Melbourne) has not only managed to craft an amazingly followable play, she has finished it with flourishes, smart movement and smooth visual gags. The actors — who never leave the stage yet have to insert and remove themselves constantly in the action — keep their energy high.

Germans seem to be a touch defensive about their comedy (the Wikipedia entry for 'German humour' is preoccupied with explaining that Germans are actually funny — they just don't, for linguistic reasons, understand English jokes), and Gieselmann proves they have every right to be. You won't be left wanting for what's lost in translation here; The Pigeons is great fun and, in that way only the foreign can be, entirely unexpected.