In fact, stage director Andreas Mitisek — who may add this to the list of his many fine achievements — has conceived The Consul as an expressionist drama, and an expressionism reminiscent of early German cinema... Mitisek offers some of his best and most evocative ideas to the stage action. The refugees slowly entering while drawing black wooden chairs behind them has a tragic force. In the final scenes, these chairs come to represent the refugees themselves as the chairs soar off into the heavens in a symbolic vision of mass suicides. A single illuminated rope — death and transcendence — falls down to Magda standing on her chair.