A kind of magic: Robert Lepage's Faith, Money, War and Love

On a technically impressive, five-hour hurtle through eight decades of history at Berlin's Schaubühne.

This is the February (yes, yes, I know it’s the 2nd March) bonus edition for my growing number of paid subscribers. I’m really grateful for your support. It makes a real difference. If you would like to become a paid supporter, you can do so for £5 a month or £50 a year. (If that’s not an option and you’re still keen to read this, drop me a line and I’ll share it with you). There will also be the regular free-to-read newsletter in your inbox on Wednesday.

Faith, Money, War and Love at Schaubühne, Berlin

Canadian theatre maker Robert Lepage has been described as a theatrical conjurer, his work blending technical wizardry with layered storytelling.

Lepage was the Artist-in-Focus during the 2022 FIND festival at the Schaubühne, after which he was commissioned to make this piece for the theatre. As described in this interview in The Berliner, he went into the rehearsal process with no text and used a deck of cards, with each suit representing one of the four central themes – faith, money, war and love - as the basis for a lengthy improvisation process.

The result is Faith, Money, War and Love, a four-act, five-hour show which spans 80 years of German history. (You can watch the trailer here). As you’d expect from Lepage, it is a technically intricate show. Four rotating video screens provide a backdrop. Initially these display four playing cards, which turn over at the beginning of each act to reveal a new suit. Over the course of the show, these screens will act as airport departure boards, an artist’s canvases, the interior of various hotel rooms and casinos, and a variety of windows.

The use of these screens, like everything in the production, is incredibly smooth in execution. This is an impeccably well-crafted show, with the cast of seven actors playing a huge array of characters between them, some pivotal, some background, gliding seamlessly between roles. Like everything else this is slickly done and supremely clean. The calibre of the acting means it is never not involving, so why did I find the experience so unsatisfying?

We begin in 1945, in a convent. A baby is left on their doorstep, and the nuns decide to take her in and raise her themselves. This establishes the type of story we're going to get from the offset, a narrative not afraid to take big Dickensian swings in which chance and coincidence play a large part.

The baby rapidly grows into a young woman -Jeanne, played by Alina Vimbai Strähler - ready to be sent into the world. Strähler captures her dizzying transition from wide-eyed toddler to eager teenager. One second, she’s making peek-a-boo faces and spitting out her dinner, the next she’s standing there with a suitcase in her hands, ready to leave her cloistered life behind.