nachtkritik, Christian Rakow, 8.10.2010

When Bakunin makes his digressions, Laucke's play text contains long footnotes. On stage, they are furious frontal solos by Matthias Neukirch, a dandy in pinstripe with a dog leash around his neck and dissheveled hair. The denser the ramifications of the text, the more purposefully he grabs hold, the more airily he swings between thoughts. In general, it is a captivating acting event. Also because director Sabine Auf der Heyde, in whom Laucke seems to have found a congenial partner since her team debut with „Für alle reicht es nicht“, once again proves herself to be a virtuoso of small, epic means.

Scenes are indicated with black and white video drawings (by Chrigel Farner) on the back wall of the stage, while the actors meet on an empty platform in front of them.

A dry wit runs through Laucke's world, the wit of people who are at their very core abstract, who know that the capitalized earth will continue to rotate even without their intervention. It is the cold breath of resignation that everyone here absorbs deeply.

Except for the mad mutt. Shortly before the finale, this incarnation of the poetic principle takes it upon itself to create an alternative story that looks confusingly similar to the gentrification story that is Berlin, but is set in Alaska and deals with the expulsion of an Inuit chief by an oil company. That's the way it is in global capitalism: different countries, same customs. The only difference is that behind the imaginary ocean crossing is a narrator who speaks in an increasingly self-deprecating and representation-critical manner, as if he is quietly trying to teach a lesson: Think differently, think differently. When characters are unable to break out, the art of storytelling has to make leaps - good art at least. It doesn't end with „This is the way things are”. But with “This is how they could be”.

Tagesspiegel, Christine Wahl, 9.10.2010

"You can imagine ‘Bakunin auf dem Rücksitz’, Dirk Laucke's commissioned work for the Deutsches Theater Berlin, as a Kreuzberg-affine type farce. All the local players of the free-floating gentrification discourse are represented. Each individual thinks from the perspective of their own regulars' table - in other words: the decisive ten centimetres too few. (...)

The motives and characters correspond one-to-one with Laucke's own gentrification work, always according to the motto: I haven't missed the lack of complexity, but I also don't want to enter the “Philosophical Quartet”, I want to enter the cashflow. (...)

Director Sabine Auf der Heyde, who already staged Laucke's play “Für alle reicht es nicht” in the DT Box at the beginning of the year, appropriately locates the action in a comic. Christoph Schubiger has built a black plateau into the Kammerspiele for the actors, behind which Chrigel Farner sketches the respective scenarios in naive outlines - and from a necessarily appropriate dog's-eye view - using video animation.

As long as the characters remain within this typological framework, the text and the staging are thoroughly amusing. But as soon as they drift too far in the direction of realism and sentimentality with their commonplaces, social-romantic danger is imminent."

taz, Katrin Bettina Müller, 11.10.2010

”... Bakunin suggests that this could have been turned into a tragedy, with lost fathers and lost sons and recurring figures of fate. Or the whole thing could be blown up into a great globalization-critical cinema à la “Miss Smila's Sense of Snow”. But Dirk Laucke, the author of “Bakunin on the Back Seat”, doesn't do that. He stays honest and hangs his story low. With a craftsman's pride. This reality has to be put on the table.

And director Sabine Auf der Heyde, who has already worked with Laucke for the Deutsches Theater, keeps her feet on the ground and the production lean. A platform is used for the comings and goings, behind it a pen nimbly draws what the imagination still needs. (...) The rest is dialog, in which the shreds fly until every aspect is illuminated. (...) The lower a character is on the social ladder, the more linguistic wit Dirk Laucke uses to characterize them, compensating for their lack of material wealth with warmth. This verges on social kitsch, which is why it was a good trick to include Bakunin the dog, whose reflections on libertarian theory and neoliberal practice are allowed to go further than those of the other characters. (...) “Bakunin on the Back Seat” was commissioned by the Deutsches Theater and tugs honestly at the reality of the city, as if it were written to grab green politicians and city councillors by their own contradictions. The fact that you still feel entertained is quite an achievement."