They are rich, bored, murdering maniacs -- or are they? Have they really killed Mr. Kolpert? Yuppie Ralf Droht and his upper-class, live-in girlfriend, Sarah Kenner, have grown bored with their privileged lifestyle, so they decide to invite Sarah's co-worker, Edith Mole, and her husband, Bastian, to their apartment for dinner. Little do the Moles know that they will be the entertainment for the evening.
German playwright, David Gieselmann, examines human emotion and the fine line between fun and game in "Mr. Kolpert." The result is disturbing chaos for the play's characters and delightful, dark humor for audiences at Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre.
The play erupts into a nerve-wrecking comedy when Ralf and Sarah reveal that not only have they failed to prepare a meal for their guests, but they also may have killed Sarah and Edith's co-worker, Mr. Kolpert. Edith dismisses the hint as a poor attempt at humor, and the couples continue with their small talk. The career descriptions that typically follow introductions are exchanged, and Ralf explains his job as a chaos researcher. Bastian, however, continues to focus on the possibility that Mr. Kolpert is dead in the trunk that Ralf and Sarah are using as a coffee table.
The play shifts from tense to chaotic as Bastian becomes insane to discover whether or not Mr. Kolpert is dead. The audience is thrown the task of deciding whether the 'game' that Sarah and Ralf have devised is in fact a game or just an experiment for Ralf's career as a chaos researcher.
While Bastian becomes violent in his attempts to find out what, if anything, happened to Mr. Kolpert, Ralf explains his theory -- mixing enough chaos with something will eventually result in the original product. Gieselmann's script was written for Ralf's theory as, scene after scene, elements are added to spin the play to an almost out of control state. While the characters border insanity, the actors caress and control the different stages of human emotion. Edith, Bastian, Sarah, and Ralf are eccentric characters placed into an unbelievable situation. At times the chaos of the play is upstaged by a nervous tone, but the overall uneasiness works to withhold the original product -- an intriguing play that speaks to a vast array of human emotion and existence.