Alfred Döblin set out in his 1929 novel to give an internal as well as an external voice to his characters and to show matters from a variety of perspectives. The narrative may follow individual characters, but (as in James Joyce’s Ulysses) the principal focus is the city itself. Franz Biberkopf, as he tries on his release from prison to live an honest life and one that he can himself respect, may find that “he is at war with an outside force, unpredictable, something that looks like fate”, but that force is Berlin-shaped: not malign, just sprawling and contradictory.

Sebastian Hartmann’s production (having adapted the novel along with Meike Schmitz and his 12-strong acting ensemble) is likewise sprawling and contradictory, clocking in at just under four and a half hours including two intervals. Hartmann moves between comedy, rhetoric and anger at the drop of a hat, uses both period and modern music and animations by Tito Baumgärtel in visual styles from George Grosz and Oskar Fischinger to Terry Gilliam. (At one point he psychs the audience out by confronting them with an animation of the empty Deutsches Theater itself.) The look of the piece is almost entirely monochrome, with occasional splashes of colour (usually red) to make particular points. Voxi Bärenklau lights proceedings with large arrays of fluorescent tubes, like huge Venetian blinds that provide dazzling brightness instead of shade.

Hartmann respects Döblin’s extensive use of the Berlinisch dialect, but takes the decision to move beyond Biberkopf as a protagonist. In the second act, he appears only briefly in the closing minutes of what is otherwise almost a revue of the city, and when he returns in the third it is not as a narrative agent but rather as the locus of a series of metaphysical conflicts. This can lead to deficiencies: apart from a rendition of “The Watch on the Rhine”, I gained little sense of the political volatility of Weimar-era Berlin. Nevertheless, such a vast canvas gives ample and understandable opportunity for directorial adventurousness, and adds up to – in the title of a contemporaneous silent film about Berlin – a symphony of a great city.

Written for the Financial Times.