| Summary |
'Over There', first staged at the Royal Court in 2009, is an intense drama of synchronous disconnection, an allegory of competing ideologies set across the Berlin Wall. When the mother of identical twins, Franz and Karl, defects to the West, she escapes only with Franz, leaving Karl behind. Twenty-five years later, Karl crosses the border from East Germany to West Germany to find his other half. The two men have shared experiences, know scraps of each other's lives and talk at the same time, but the gulf of ideology and upbringing between them is impossible. When the Berlin Wall comes down, the physical barrier between them is removed, but although their worlds recombine it can never reconnect. Ravenhill's visceral, confrontational play examines the hungers released when two ideologies, separated by a common language, meet again. |
