23 September 2013, Shirley Apthorp, Financial Times
Review (en)
Stifters Dinge
Heiner Goebbels’ eccentric masterpiece
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Stifters Dinge is billed as “a play without actors, a performance without performers”. It could also be described as 70 minutes of pure delight, or as a nerd’s paradise. As the intendant of the current Ruhrtriennale, composer Heiner Goebbels has every right to bring his 2007 masterpiece to the Duisburg’s Kraftzentrale. In this cavernous industrial hall, the piece looks as fresh as if it had been born yesterday. In fact it has been seen at more than 300 performances around the world already.
Stifters Dinge is not new, but it is utterly wonderful, and perfect for the Ruhr, where performance spaces invite reflection on the relationship between man and technology, between nature and man, between the passage of time and human achievement. Stifters Dinge does all this and more. Goebbels’ Heath Robinson machines have the inherent beauty of the best inventions. They are infinitely complex, drolly subversive, and yet somehow so whole that you find yourself wondering why nobody has done this before, and where you could get one for your home."
on: Stifters Dinge (Music Theatre)