2024-05-01 12:42:22
Provincial actor Hendrik Höfgen is consumed by a sick desire for fame. He is willing to sacrifice absolutely everything for her, including his own morality. He becomes entangled in the entanglements of the growing national socialist movement in Germany, until he unknowingly becomes its accomplice, Mephisto, whom he successfully plays on the stage of the Berlin State Theater.
The novel by one of the most prominent representatives of German anti-fascist literature, Klaus Mann, dates from 1936, but it was made most famous by the Oscar-winning film directed by István Szabó from the 1980s. Czech theaters also performed Mephisto in the new millennium, and at least six adaptations can be counted over the past twenty years. It has now been conceived by director Marián Amsler in Prague’s National Theater as an extensive social fresco with the ambition to map the creeping rise of Nazism. He has been presenting drama performances at the State Opera since last week.
Höfgen’s role model was Mann’s former close friend and collaborator, the purposeful actor and director Gustaf Grüngens, whom the writer met in 1925 at the Hamburg Chamber Theater. There he also planted the first part of the prose. Other real people from the author’s life also appear in it, including the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, the leader’s official representative Hermann Göring, whom he embodied in the character of a central manipulator called the Air Force General.
In addition to the incomplete de-Nazification of Germany, it was the open similarity of the figures with real people that contributed to the fact that, unlike other countries, Mephisto was not published in Germany until 1956, i.e. several years after Mann’s death.
Today, the growing wave of populism or extremism is understandably tempting to draw parallels, but the concrete contemporary anchoring of the work, from straightforward symbols to possible analogies with historical figures, can be more of a problem than a currency for contemporary creators. It would be easier to grasp the hero’s personal failure as a psychological study of obsession with one’s own career. At the National Theatre, they adhere to the traditional designation of Mephisto as a novel of one career, but they do not want to give up the wider social and historical framework either.
The director and at the same time the author of the dramatization Marián Amsler and the dramaturg Jana Slouková try as honest storytellers to capture all the nuances of the original. It mixes the line of the gradual onset of Nazism with a specific fate at the core of the weakling and swindled egomaniac Höfgen, played by Robert Mikluš.
The air force general, played by Marko Daniel, looks more like a clown from a variety show in front of a painted curtain during a fiery speech. | Photo: Patrik Borecký
Man’s relationship to power or ideology is represented on stage by a whole range of pseudo-heroes. The gallery of types dominates especially the first, theatrically extremely conservative part of the production. The scenography by Juraj Kuchárek simulates a foyer with the background of the provincial Hamburg scene, where Höfgen currently works and dreams of a great career. The actors are dressed in period clothes, the set, with exceptions, is dominated by realism. It is also reflected in the portrayal of the characters, as if the goal was an unnecessarily detailed “period relationship”.
Already in the first part, the principle of live cinema, combining theater with a live edited film, is applied a little outside the set framework. After the break, it becomes decisive. The intimate situations that Höfgen shares in the backstage plan with his dance teacher and lover Julietta, the Slovak-speaking Alžbeta Ferencová known as Zea, are projected on a large-format screen.
With a pause, Mephisto radically transforms. Time concreteness is disappearing. Höfgen, now present in Berlin, finds himself in a room lined with mirrors, which turns into a film studio, a theater dressing room, a study, or metaphorically into his subconscious or conscience as needed. The determining factor is the camera’s eye, following small changes in facial expressions or caricature, with which the actors act out certain situations in the spirit of interwar grotesque.
The appearance of the costumes suppresses a specific time classification, the Nazi uniforms in the glittering latex lilac version are more reminiscent of carnival dummies. The representative of the Third Reich, i.e. the Air Force General played by Marko Daniel, looks more like a clown from a variety show during a fiery speech in front of a painted curtain.
Unfortunately, this much more contemporary take on the template comes after a long-winded prologue that lacked theme. And the second, more visually striking part of the production does not offer that either. Live cinema remains at the level of effect, not interpretation. At the end, the demonic theater-obsessed Höfgen appears as a characterless wretch, whining on the shoulders of his similarly morally warped girlfriend, the actress Nicoletta von Niebuhrová, played by Pavla Beretová. Like other actors, including Robert Mikluš, she too is cast according to a so-called type. This results in their unsurprising interpretation of the roles, which is also influenced by a certain prosaic nature of the adaptation. In general, this time the protagonists, not even Mikluš, basically don’t have much to play.
Mephisto confirms the current direction of the National Theatre’s drama, whose productions focus primarily on effect, do not deviate from anything, and above all are dramaturgically clueless. Which is enhanced by the setting of the work against the backdrop of the empty pompous, gilded portals of the State Opera.
Theatre
Klaus Mann: Mephisto
Direction and dramatization: Marián Amsler
State Opera, Prague, premieres on April 18 and 19, next reruns on April 27 and again on May 8, 23 and 24.