Humans are fascinated by community. We search for our place under the sun, only to discover that a place under the sun inevitably means other people. I have never been a great believer in the one-person show. Theatre, to me, requires at least two: one cannot dance a tango alone, build a house alone, and perhaps one cannot build a world onstage alone.
Yet De Profundis, Oscar Wilde’s self-indulgent, poetic meditation, has made me question that belief. Not entirely, mind you.
Directed by Oliver Reese and performed by Jens Harzer, De Profundis brings Wilde’s prison letter to the stage: a man confined without sunlight, unable to forgive the lover to whom he attributes so much of his suffering, and equally unable to release the immense love and betrayal that ties him to the past.
It is a work of poetry, imagination and language. I have read De Profundis before and, despite admiring Wilde, never felt particularly compelled to return to it. Dramatically, it is quite static; there is little action, and its self-indulgence can become exhausting. Yet the language remains mesmerising. The question, then, is not whether the text is theatrical, but how one performs it and, more importantly, how one succeeds at that.
Two words. It’s Jens Harzer.
I cannot say Harzer “stole the show”, since technically there was no one else there to steal it from. Instead, they carry it. For nearly two hours, Harzer gives a masterclass in acting: delicate yet aggressive, light yet heavy, shifting through emotional states with remarkable nuance. They live moment to moment, although occasionally directorial choices pull them away from that immediacy.
Did it feel like almost two hours? Yes and no.
Performed in German with subtitles projected onto two screens, the production creates another tension: do I watch Harzer, or do I read? At times, the subtitles feel too far removed from the action, forcing an unfortunate choice between understanding the words and witnessing the performance.
Berliner Ensemble: De Profundis creates a lonely, fractured world around this solitary figure. Director Oliver Reese, alongside Steffen Heinke’s lighting, Jörg Gollasch’s sound and Hansjörg Hartung’s stage design, work well together to give Wilde’s confinement an imaginative landscape. Some directorial choices, however, feel like a student director determined to prove they have discovered the entire vocabulary of contemporary theatre at once. Some work wonderfully; others feel familiar.
Moreover, De Profundis is a letter, not a play. Reese’s adaptation, with dramaturgy by Johannes Nölting, manages to honour the source while giving it theatrical shape.
But the fourth star belongs to Harzer. Without that immaculate, fascinating performance, my verdict might have been quite different.
Berliner Ensemble: De Profundis lands somewhere close to very good, maybe even excellence, but leaves me wanting more: more daring, more originality, and, above all, even more danger.
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