Non-childish time – Newspaper Kommersant No. 61 (7506) dated 04/08/2023

One of the most successful and interesting performances of the current Berlin theater season is the Childhood Archive at the Schaubühne am Leniner Platz. It was staged by Caroline Nguyen, a French director of Vietnamese origin, well-known to Russian audiences. Together with the audience Esther Steinbock studied the problems of international adoption.

When you recommend this performance, the famous joke of Faina Ranevskaya comes to mind: “I spoke for so long and unconvincingly, as if I were talking about the friendship of peoples.” Start telling someone that the play is about the problem of adopted children, that the office of an international organization connecting children with adoptive parents is on stage, that the “Childhood Archive” was created on the basis of real stories (and even if there are fantasies in it, everything looks very authentic ) that these stories seem to be simple, but, as they say, life-like, you will lose your interlocutor. Yes, everything is clear, the theater has raised an important social topic, they are only talking about adoption now, but it’s better for a friend to leave, and I, perhaps, will rest.

Caroline Nguyen gained international fame a few years ago, when her performance Saigon literally swept the entire festival world (in Moscow it would have been shown at the Territory festival). There, a Vietnamese restaurant was placed on the stage, in which different people came – and from the combination of their small stories, a big, sick, many hours and complex plot about the Vietnam War emerged. In the “Archive of Childhood” the same principle is a single space where different people come. But the atmosphere is much more intimate, and the problems are very personal, hidden and painful. It’s unlikely that The Archives of Childhood will make the same market hit as Saigon, but in terms of directing skills, Caroline Nguyen has made a huge step forward in a few seasons.

We see a pavilion that reproduces in detail the “office of childhood” – with a meeting room, a children’s playground, a screen for remote communication and a coffee corner. Behind the large window there is another room, not very necessary for the main action, but in precisely calculated places it changes the space and therefore rules the mood of the episodes. At first, several stories of adoptive parents are announced in the play, but gradually Caroline Nguyen focuses on two of them, unfolding in parallel. The first is about a single, childless woman who wants to adopt a Vietnamese boy. Everything already seems to be on the ointment, but obstacles arise in the homeland of the child, which the heroine accepts with desperation, but also with humility. Negotiations are either zoomed or live. In the end, the boy is nevertheless “given away” to a woman, she brings him to Germany and sends him to school.

The second detailed story is about the girl Nina, who has reached the age of majority and therefore received the right to access her “case”: many years ago, literally as a baby, she was adopted in Russia. The foster mother tries to prevent her daughter’s access to documents, but the law is the law. The girl finds out that she is Russian by origin, that she has an older brother who lives near Moscow, who once refused to leave with the Germans, and that her real mother, who abandoned her two children a long time ago, is still alive. No matter how the German mother resists, the girl meets in zoom with her brother and real mother, whom she does not remember – this is the most dramatic and, perhaps, overly sentimental scene of the play. Nevertheless, the accuracy of the calculation is amazing: the “Moscow” video was recorded in advance, but the illusion of a live conversation between Berlin and Russia is captivating.

In general, the main advantage of the performance is the amazingly finely developed score. The relationship of three women working in an office – doing the same thing, but in very different ways. Now quieter, then louder soft music playing; a delicate, but calculated to the moment, light score – the change of the time of day rhymes with the change of mood. Precise roles of actresses working on halftones and discovering an amazing unity, as if with the very fabric of life. All this together, subtly connected, does not allow you to be distracted from the seemingly inconspicuous action for even a second. Moreover, Caroline Nguyen puts on a sad performance – just not about how important and necessary everything that is done in the field of adoption. And that, in fact, human happiness is not created anyway by any correct attitudes of a society consisting of kind and even noble people. In the Archive of Childhood, everything is done right – and at the same time, everyone remains unhappy. Including the Vietnamese boy, surrounded by warmth and care in Berlin, but in the finale asking his new mother when he will return home.