Reviews

One of the most worth seeing plays of Florian Scholz’s era as artistic director, which is coming to an end … a great theatre experiment, and yet pure realism. They must have seen it, because they’ve never seen it like this before.
kärnten.orf.at sent on 10.10.2019 to Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The hour, when we knew nothing about each other)

Should we go to Klagenfurt for this performance? Yes, by all means. The play celebrates in an imaginative and thoroughly contemporary form that pure poetry, full of obstinacy and mystery, for which Handke received the highest laurels in literature.
Die Presse (Vienna) from 12.10.2019 to Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The hour, when we knew nothing about each other)

Grandiose Handke premiere for the Nobel Prize for Literature. As a visually powerful walk across the great square of time, she misses the eternal drive of man in the course of the world and wordlessly finds a language that embraces all that is existential. Schuster’s sensitive direction is very close to the pulse of humanity. Grandiose!
Kronenzeitung from 12.10.2019 to Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The hour, when we knew nothing about each other)

Mini scene follows mini scene, perfectly choreographed (choreography: Martin Gruber), in a veritable flood of images. The actors, who come from Austria, Germany, Italy, France, Israel and Afghanistan, not only show great acting skills in the short sequences, but also help to shape the sound space live. Strong applause for the team.
Kleine Zeitung (Klagenfurt) from 10.10.2019 to Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The hour, when we knew nothing about each other)

Precise image series: Elaborate Handke premiere in Klagenfurt. The performers impressed the audience with powerful images on Thursday in the Klagenfurt City Theatre. A choreographed hustle and bustle, whose grandiose team performance was applauded at the end. They embody far more than 300 roles, countless costume and prop changes have to be choreographed. The international ensemble meets the challenge with bravura.
APA, 11.10.2019 to Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The hour, when we knew nothing about each other)

A magical interaction.
Woche Kärnten (Klagenfurt) from 16.10.2019 to Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The hour, when we knew nothing about each other)

It plays alone with the poetry of movement, of signs, of bodies, of light, of colours, of images. Theatre as a model contribution to a modern Europe in which different cultural backgrounds complement each other: The KULA-Compagnie around director Robert Schuster and choreographer Martin Gruber follows this idea.
Kleine Zeitung (Klagenfurt) from 28.10.2019 to Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The hour, when we knew nothing about each other)

The staging provides an impressive example of the power of scenic instructions. Director Robert Schuster and choreographer Martin Gruber lead the six performers with imaginative props across the open stage. The increasingly hallucinatory impression is also reinforced by an intensification resulting from the sequence of images in this world kaleidoscope. It is a merciless, surreal world of violence.
Der Standard (Vienna) from 12.10.2019 to Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The hour, when we knew nothing about each other)

The production of the KULA Compagnie goes beyond the scope of this project by extending it to the whole of Europe and beyond its borders. Thus the small house in the capital of the canton of Grisons offers great world theatre.
Republik (Switzerland) from 6.11.2019 to Europée. Eine Nationalversammlung (Europée. A National Assembly)

Plea against prohibition to think: There is no present without a past. The KULA-Compagnie lives its message of enduring diversity and differences, of understanding beyond language. Cohesion through bodywork. The evening is especially convincing where the unbelievable joy of acting is radiating: borderline rituals, absurd and existential, comic clichés that reveal the seriousness – theatre can do that. Mythical, imperfect and wise as life itself. International understanding, here it goes across the stage through the stomach.
ZDF Kulturzeit broadcasts on 4.2.2019 on Europée. Eine Nationalversammlung (Europée. A National Assembly)

For choreographer Martin Gruber – his inventions belong to the best of the performance – origin and language play an important role for the rhythmic-musical realization. Gruber: “The foreign no longer frightens, but increases one’s desire and confidence to express oneself”.
Neues Deutschland from 30.8.2017 to Malalai

When Jeanne slaughters the English usurpers of France in a clearly choreographed battle scene (choreography: Martin Gruber), their explanation sounds like a statement from the Afghan wars of recent decades. The staging is worthwhile just this amazingly precise fading, penetration, and mutual illumination.
Süddeutsche Zeitung from 29.8.2017 to Malalai

This realisation finally makes the piece accessible to you in all its richness of facets.
ORF Salzburg, broadcast on 11.6.2008 to Sakkorausch

Strange! Lively! Thrilling! The spectators are intoxicated. Maximum enjoyment, a rush of happiness. This piece is a highlight of the Hue Festival 2004.
Vietnam Express from 16.6.2004 and Thua Thien Huev from 19.6.2004 to Dialoge über die Liebe (Dialogues about Love) (translated from Vietnamese)

Premiere of the weekend: Opera in Hanoi. Precise and stirring interpretation, idiosyncratic accordion playing, intent on effect. Three artists, one instrument – professional opera is not to be had less elaborately.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 17.10.2004 on Dialoge über die Liebe (Dialogues about Love) (translated from Vietnamese)

The audience applauded the actors again and again for this extraordinary performance.
Thua Thien Hue from 15.6.2004 on Dialoge über die Liebe (Dialogues about Love) (translated from Vietnamese)

And so the “Monteverdi Duels” became a hit of the festival night.
Süddeutsche Zeitung from 24.6.2004 to Monteverdi Duelle

Martin Gruber succeeds in triggering a great emotional participation in the viewer. With this “theatre project”, Göße and Gruber have regained an experiment on the podium of the Ulm theatre in which Western and Far Eastern theatre happily combine.
Die Deutsche Bühne 11/1998 at Anstatt Rashomon (Instead of Rashomon)

An existentialist, minimalist piece. And now: Zen or the art of drawing on such outstanding sources of inspiration. Basic philosophical questions are twisted into puns and they are fun and meaningful.
SWF 3 television, “Kultur Südwest”, broadcast on 23.9.1998, atAnstatt Rashomon (Instead of Rashomon)

Martin Gruber creates a light, clear network of relationships, self-contained and never purely formalistic. This is a choreographed linguistic rhythm.
Cult 8/1998-1999 at Fest für Liebende in unglücklicher Konstellation

The “Autistenhochzeit” is a very pictorial and expressive language and sound experiment that delights as well as an idiosyncratic sensual theatre dream, first-class actors and imaginative theatre experiment.
AZ Munich from 4.2.1993 to Autistenhochzeit

Martin Gruber stages a daring theatre evening between soul surgery and chaos theory.
Süddeutsche Zeitung from 14.9.1993 to Autistenhochzeit

(The contributions quoted here have been shortened)