Lies that people are only too happy to believe
‘The whole Truth about Lies’ by Nico and the Navigators at Radialsystem
The evening seems like a logical continuation, although the differences could hardly be greater. At the end of September, the independent theatre collective Nico and the Navigators sent Fabian Hinrichs to the Haus der Bundespressekonferenz as the leader of a populist party called the ‘Democratic Alliance’ and acted out the possible consequences of such a man's election victory. The lie as a tried and tested means of political communication already appeared there in all conceivable manifestations; in ‘The whole Truth about Lies’, an eclectic and ecstatic evening of music theatre, it takes centre stage - with a broad cultural-historical focus, but always in relation to the present.
That sounds abstract. In concrete terms, it is about the lies of images and the question of what authentic speech actually is or could be. What we see becomes implausible and self-contradictory in two fascinating ways: Firstly, the singing, dancing and acting ensemble uses an illusion technique with which the British inventor John Henry Pepper caused a sensation as early as 1862. A huge, semi-transparent mirror tilted at 45 degrees reflects what is happening on the floor of the stage in such a way that it looks as if it is standing or floating in the centre of the room. And secondly, Nicola Hümpel's production utilises the alienation effects made possible by the new image generators with artificial intelligence. They are also projected onto the mirror and appear as three-dimensional as holograms, even though they are not.
In both cases, it is clear how the visual effect is created, it is a game with perfect information. And yet the impression is overwhelming: you believe him because you want to. The question of the nature of the lie can be experienced here as a problem of the relationship between sender and receiver. And as such it has been dealt with extensively in art, in wonderful pieces of music from Gioachino Rossini to John Lennon, from Georg Friedrich Händel to Leonard Cohen. They alternate fluently here, interspersed with dance choreographies and short play scenes in which everyday lies become a theme: in small talk, in the reunion of a separated couple, in a farewell speech at the grave or in the flaming speech of the demagogue. A clever, multi-layered evening that is well worth seeing.