DEATH OF A SQUIRREL MAN BY MALGORZATA SIKORSKA-MISZCZUK

Death of a Squirrel Man is a play about Ulrike Meinhof, a leading figure in the German left-wing terrorist group The Red Army Faction (RAF), active in the 1970s.

Though the play relates to the real members of the terrorist group Red Army Faction and to the bloody events that shook up Germany in the 1970s, it is by no means a realistic, historical play. Instead, it shows revolution in a playful and grotesque manner, depicting the revolutionaries as pop culture icons. In a series of cartoon-like surrealistic scenes, one follows the progress of a character named U (Ulrike Meinhof). At first, she is an uninvolved member of the middle-class who spends her time in the local reading room. Then, U teams up with Baader, the Anti-man (who pops out of a "jar of poetry") and his vulgar girl-friend Ensslin - a couple who go from door to door, telling a fairy tale about the Color Red. Together, they outwit a Melancholy Cop and see the kind-hearted Squirrel-Man - a symbol of bourgeois society - die once a day over and over again, whilst unsuccessfully attempting to express his affection for her to U. Finally, U is imprisoned and sentenced to death.

In the hilarious and absurd reality of the play, the Melancholy Cop's heart can grow together again, even though he was shot right through it. The Squirrel-Man lives on despite his many and varied grotesque deaths. Ensslin's son, Lucky, converses with his mother's mug shot on a Wanted Notice.

The characters' elaborate speeches and the fairytale-like format (counting-out rhymes, puns, terrorist acts shown as children's games, U seeing her transformation as that of Cinderella) make the whole story seem even less realistic, with the characters resembling rowdy, simple-minded Muppets (not surprising if you know that the author worked as a copywriter and script-writer for the Polish version of "Sesame Street").