Review: KINSKI AND I Shares One Man's Fascination With Successful and Controversial German born Actor Klaus Kinski

Thursday 17 September 2015, 7:30pm, 505 @ 5 Eliza St Newtown

ABC Film Critic CJ Johnson gives the audience an insight into the life of the depraved and volatile movie star Klaus Kinski though excerpts from the extremely rare autobiography, "All I Need Is Love" in KINSKI AND I. An obsession with movies that started at Glebe's Valhalla Cinema led Johnson to want to know more about the directors and actors, in particular, the star of the first movie he saw AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD.

The pop-up theatre, 505@5 Eliza St, is a perfect space for the combination of film footage and Johnson reading selections from Kinski's rare book that was withdrawn and pulped almost as soon as it was released in 1988. The audience is greeted by a montage of footage of audiences in Kinski's movies, ranging from grand opera houses to town squares. Johnson reads from an iPad on a lectern in an impression of a German accent, sharing Kinski's recount of the making of AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD.

Johnson uses lighting and positioning on the stage to distinguish between his own words and Kinski's, giving his personal commentary on the information shared under bright lights, front and center, returning to the lectern under spotlight to share more of Kinski's memoirs. He is passionate in both the retelling and expressing his own views using congruent body language and vocal pace and variety to bring the sordid stories to life.

Given the subject material, KINSKI AND I is not a show for the faint hearted. Kinski was a venomous, cutting, insulting, and terribly blunt character when it came to describing people, particularly director and producer Werner Herzog for whom he starred in 5 movies. He is confrontational in his explicit, pornographic descriptions of his promiscuous lifestyle and insatiable appetite for sex that started from a young age. The egomaniac's volatile and unpredictable temperament is also recounted as the deeply disturbed man is exposed.

Whilst KINSKI AND I unearths an extremely dark story, there is humor in Kinski's recount of his life in a way that has people laughing before the gravity of his actions sink in. The title of the book and his statement "why am I a whore, because I need love" sum up the core of Kinski's issues and draws comparisons to Kinski's contemporaries that have been found to have deviant tendencies despite the public adoration they received. Johnson has carefully selected extracts to summarize Kinski's life to find amusement in the depravity which has people horrified at their own enjoyment of the stories.

KINSKI AND I

Friday 18 September 2015 to Sunday 27 September 2015

505@ 5 Eliza St

5 Eliza St, Newtown