The Kitchen

“The day begins with the tired entrance of the actors, there is still time for personal teasing and trivialities between the cooks and the waitresses, which represent at least six nationalities. Text and kitchen noises are so well fitted around each other, that the spectator has no trouble understanding the words. That is “Theater der Klaenge”. Movement, words and kitchen sounds eventually swell up into a hurricane: it is now time to serve lunch, total hecticness. The public is abruptly thrown into the break. It is almost dreamlike when cooks and waitresses return to each other after their break. It is even time for a fight with ladles and egg-beaters. When the restaurant owner Marango begins his rounds again, shuffling between pots and pans, the spectator foresees: The tempo will rise again- to a hectic dinner sitting. It never gets there though. The German Peter, who on this day has dealt some, but also had to take a few, gets out of control, as the waitress Monique advises him their friendship is over. He whacks up the gas main with the kitchen hatchet. He has thereby brought the human machine, in which every individual is only a small wheel, to a standstill. Shock gives way to the pressure of the work bustle.”

Das Gastgewerbe

“The company could have also named their production “the modern working stage”, but this time the reference is to an existing piece. When the high point of the lunch service befalls like a hurricane, the music of kitchen sounds turns into cacophony and the choreography picks up intoxicating speed. This was already a feast for the eyes in the general rehearsal, and one felt with anxiety how the pressure rises in this kitchen inferno.”

Duesseldorfer Illustrierte

“Gigantic applause at the premiere in the theater house. It is already a work of considerable diligence, which Lensing and the Ensemble have achieved: no less than 24 actors are keeping busy in Mr. Marango’s restaurant. And when, in the huge with stoves, tables and ovens, opulently equipped kitchen, they hack away, cut, roast, it looks convincingly true to the detail. Here people are trimmed down to their function. When the waitresses bolt in, throwing the orders at the cooks, and these shout back the confirmations, a rhythm results which explains the automatism of this slave work.”

Neue Rhein Zeitung

“Each single movement is perfectly integrated into the pantomimed work sequence, and culminates in the elegantly choreographed chaos of the lunch service, which closes with intermission. Almost without exception the actors are sublime: among them Joerg Balschun as Peter, Veronika Boehle as salad chef and above all the secretive leading figure of the evening, Heiko Seidel as the heavily accented Saxon “Zoni” Konrad.”

Rheinische Post

“The stage of Juergen Steger, a unique feast for the eyes, reproduces the splendiferous atmosphere of a large kitchen with swinging doors: a gray and white maze of stoves, tables, work stations and counters. Each new arrival cultivates his entrance, an international work force of Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Greeks. There is dance, flirting, beating and chatting: over work, love, life and fantasies. Two fall out of the norm: Heiko Seidel, a “New one from the other side”, from Halle. With his skillful accent he is perhaps the prize of the evening. At any rate he has the laughs on his side. Next to him only Joerg Balschun can prevail. He builds himself a triumphal arch out of buckets, pots, brooms, an unbeatable daydreamer in the image of a medieval knight.”

Westdeutsche Zeitung

“Much effort was put out, in order to study the operation and to execute the true to detail, but without food, quasi pantomime. For the performance of “The Kitchen” wants to be a work of art as a whole, which shows the working world to be a hell machine in which man functions as a small wheel under great pressure. The high point comes at lunch time, during which movement escalates to a fast ballet, and acoustics to a cacophony of clatter and shouting.”

Die Deutsche Buehne