Searching for traces in the park
Once again Botho Strauß rehearses a satyric drama in our society, governed as it is by the concept of the Last Judgement. He penetrates our technological present by using the myths of nature from the past. Oberon and Titania, the fairy King and Queen from Shakespeare's "Midsummer-night's Dream" have a disconcerting effect here, but also recall our dreams and wishes in the efficient, unpoetic and unimaginative world we live in today.
Titania's attempt to conjure up the purity of nature once again are in vain, despite the ringing verses: "I know a bank where the wild thyme blows / Where oxlips, and the nodding violet grows". Oberon, her husband and companion, does not understand her any more. "It is senseless. Only a God can save us".
The setting for these rich fragments from literature and mythology is a park. Rubbish and waste from our civilisation are hanging on the bushes - litter, beer-cans, scraps of tape. This Chinese Puzzle is a sad, clowning comment on our disposable society.
(Siegfried Kienzle, ZDF)

"The ambiguous spectacle of "The Park" is one of the few examples of a television version which really captures the multi- facetted acting of a company as fine as the Schaubühne. Oberon, the Fairy King, roams speechless among punks, and Titania, tortured by lust for sexual redemption, begs the back of a cow... Shakespeare's mythical eroticism is coupled with the modern frustration of an urban society in a disquieting manner.
(Frankfurter Neue Presse)