About the work
Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) is a theatre production based on Günter Grass's 1959 novel of the same name, a milestone of German post-war literature. The widely performed stage version is by Oliver Reese, who condensed the novel into a solo evening: a single actor — at the Berliner Ensemble, Nico Holonics — embodies Oskar Matzerath. The adaptation premiered at Schauspiel Frankfurt in 2015 and moved to the Berliner Ensemble in 2017 when Reese became its artistic director, where it has remained a repertory staple.
Plot
Oskar Matzerath, born in 1924 in Danzig as the Nazi era dawns, recognises the adult world as a catastrophe already as a child and rejects it. On his third birthday he decides to stop growing and withdraws into the role of observer and drummer. With his red-and-white tin drum and a voice that can shatter glass, he accompanies and comments on the rise of fascism, war, guilt and the petit-bourgeois life around him. The grotesque biography of the eternal drummer becomes a reckoning with an entire era.
Cultural significance
Grass's novel is among the most important works of twentieth-century German literature and contributed substantially to his 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature; Volker Schlöndorff's 1979 film adaptation won the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award. Oliver Reese's stage version is regarded as an exceptional phenomenon in German theatre: over more than ten years and well over a hundred performances, the solo evening with Nico Holonics has been celebrated by audiences and critics — including the New York Times — and ranks among the defining productions of the Berliner Ensemble.