Das Leben des Vernon Subutex 1

Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz Berlin

Things are going remarkably badly for Vernon Subutex. Formerly the owner of a record store known throughout Paris, he is losing his business - and thus his raison d'être - in the age of digital file sharing and streaming services.

Joachim Meyerhoff

He's blessed with clients from the rock scene to the hip bourgeoisie and idolized by female groupies. Then, after selling most of his stuff online, he finds himself without a source of income. Even more: without a raison d'être. A dinosaur of the analog era, he buries himself in his apartment for years with six-packs and TV shows that he can only pay for with the help of his former bandmate, the now legendary singer Alex Bleach. When the latter dies an early rock star death, Vernon's last economic support breaks away. He ends up on the street and begins a couchsurfing odyssey with old friends and companions and thus a journey to the depths of a deeply insecure society marked by division, inequality and social neglect - until he finally has to fight his way through Paris as a clochard. Whether hapless screenwriter, former punk, now "right-wing sack," liberal Muslim with a fundamentalist daughter, feminist ex-porn star, super sleuth specializing in cyberbullying, or banlieue macho - in abrupt shifts of perspective, French author and filmmaker Virginie Despentes sketches a dazzling panorama of different generations, social classes, gender identities, and political orientations. The first part of her trilogy around Vernon Subutex is both a par force ride through the issues of our time and a fascinating social panorama. After "Return to Reims" and "In the Heart of Violence", Thomas Ostermeier once again devotes himself to the contrasts of a visibly polarizing and brutalizing present in the form of an adaptation of a contemporary French prose text.

Play with English surtitles on March 24, 2023. With French surtitles on March 25, 2023.

In a version by Florian Borchmeyer, Bettina Ehrlich and Thomas Ostermeier

Translated from the French by Claudia Steinitz

Artists/Collaborators: Schaubühne Berlin

Runtime: Sat, 15/06/2024 to Mon, 17/06/2024