Kone question, it is necessary to speak out against xenophobia. Unfortunately again, or, worse said: unfortunately still, unfortunately again and again. Worldwide, but also and currently especially in Vienna. The spoken theater can and does do a lot to achieve this, also in Vienna. Martin Kušej, the outgoing Burgtheater director, has been working there for a long time. For his farewell performance as host, he chose the rarely performed piece “Orpheus Descends,” written by Tennessee Williams in 1957.
Stage is too big
The drama had not been seen at the Burgtheater before, and since the premiere last Saturday we understand a little better why. The short version of the reasoning might be: The house on the ring is too big for this bitter small town tragedy. Of course, it can also be a little more detailed. “Orpheus Descends” is the fictional but very realistic description of the events in a small town somewhere in the south of the United States of America, typical of the so-called Southern Gothic, of which Tennessee Williams is widely considered to be the first representative. One day Val Xavier, a wandering musician with a dark past and possibly a former call boy, dressed in a snakeskin jacket, appears in this same place. Carol, who is officially shunned by everyone and decried as a “slut,” calls him “snakeskin” and thinks she knows him. Val denies it at first, but later admits it. He is soon employed as a salesman by “Lady”, who runs the shop of her dying, hated, evil and brutal husband Jabe and wants to convert it into a café. A kind of love develops between the two.
Hell on earth
Lady gets pregnant. The whole town knows about it, and soon Jabe too. He then explains to Lady that he killed her father, an Italian who ran a café and illegal liquor bar, as the leader of a lynch mob and that he also set the “Itaker” and his bar on fire. He married Lady out of pure spite, everyone knew that but her. She was not yet eighteen years old at the time and was pregnant by Carol's brother. She aborted the child. And now Jabe shoots her and Val and burns down his own property – hell on earth.
When the curtain goes up on this opening night, it's dark. But the flames are already blazing in the background, and the revolving stage slowly shows the ruins of the shop, a few small, not particularly clean-looking rooms and probably the backyard, in which a burnt-out car wreck rises ninety degrees. No insight is yet granted into the upper floor, where Martin Reinke, dressed only in long, grubby underpants, wheezes away as Jabe most of the time. As is often the case when Kušej directs, the harmonious, compact stage design was designed by Annette Murschetz. The costume design by Heide Chancellor, also in Kušej's team, does not allow any real conclusions to be drawn about the time of the action – that is supposed to mean always and here and now, in accordance with the perpetual topicality of the material.
This is getting a bit much
It's not just Tim Werth's “snake skin” with dyed-blonde, short messy hair, Val sometimes picks up the guitar and sings. During a few changes of scenery and sometimes together with Werths, Oliver Welter, known as the co-founder of the indie rock band Naked Lunch, makes the strings vibrate. Responsible for all the musical numbers, he also sings deeply sad songs in English, probably as a comment on the increasingly murky twists and turns of the plot spiral. Of course, that gets a bit much over the course of the evening. Carol, portrayed with ironic and suffering by Nina Siewert, is not only avoided by almost everyone, no, in some scenes she appears beaten bloody, but refuses to say who did this to her. No matter, it could have been anyone and everyone anyway. Only Lady is not hostile to Carol and is even willing to help the girl, despite Carol's affection for Val.
Pretty underwhelming
Martin Kušej cast Lady with Lisa Wagner. She plays this eternally deceived person very convincingly. However, this is her first engagement at the Burgtheater. Which brings us to another point why this “Orpheus descends” doesn’t really harmonize with the setting. Without wanting to list names here, it is clear that on this evening the smallest roles were filled by great actors. And in truth they are all quite underwhelmed in the almost three hours (including the break), and are allowed to show what they could do in perhaps two or three performances if they were only allowed to.
So the actors appear to have been sold slightly short on this, the last evening of their outgoing director. The premiere audience still doesn't seem overly dissatisfied. Brave, but not excessively loud applause. A bit lukewarm for a Burgtheater director's farewell.
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