2023-04-28 14:33:46
Dhe great theater director Dieter Dorn, the last representative of a faithful production, did something that is like asking the Rammstein group to do a recital of contemplative Schubert songs: he connected Beckett with Feydeau.
Together, Samuel Beckett’s play “Happy Days”, the sad high point or low point of the “Theatre of the Absurd”, is squeezed into one play with Georges Feydeau’s funny marital comedy “Herzliches Condolences” at Vienna’s “Theater in der Josefstadt”. And it works!
The only medium-sized theater, which has been fighting against relegation to the boulevard for decades, has hit the jackpot with Dieter Dorn and even more so with the word “Beckett”. Such a famous director, and such a serious author too! And he even did them the favor of adding Feydeau, the playwright who has always had the greatest appeal with the age-old audience.
The younger ones won’t even know it anymore: Feydeau’s doors open and close again and open again every second, and the maid has to hide in the closet because she’s been mistaken for someone else. Or something like that (they call it vaudeville theater). Even those who no longer have any hearing aids understand that.
Beckett, on the other hand, leads into the abysses of life, as it is so beautifully or theatrically called. According to this, life is neither good nor bad, but meaningless. Beckett came to this view during his long sojourns in Germany during the 1930s. For him, the crimes and devastation of the Nazis were not an expression of evil power and a devilish attitude; no, much worse, they were absurd! Not surprising, then, that Beckett was traded highly after the war.
And has aged badly in the meantime. Dieter Dorn, almost 90, still feels the absurdity of all existence. Maybe even the similarly old crowd.
Little nightcap: Scene from “Happy Days / Heartfelt Condolences”
Those: Maj. Rita Newman
In the Josefstadt-Theater there has been a rumor for ages that the theater doctor – who really has a clearly visible entrance there – has a mortality rate of 1.2 deaths per performance. Of course not. But the majority of visitors are already retired. Maybe people who, like the Beckett characters here on stage, have absolutely nothing to do and fill the day with meaningless rituals.
The stage design and equipment is naturalistically sparse, about the late 1940s, and nothing happens, more precisely: NOTHING. You have understood the message after ten minutes at the most, and to the point of admiration; one longs for the modern director’s theater shit with balloons, trans women and Goebbels speeches on video screens.
In the theater of the absurd, every word counts, the director tells this newspaper. It is possible that true Beckett friends will discover something that the distracted reviewer has not yet recognized.
The protagonists, a man and a woman, apparently have no neighbors, children, colleagues, let alone friends. It’s clear that such an existence feels dull. Or bland, as they say in Vienna.
Theaterlegende: Dieter Dorn
Quelle: Getty Images/Hannes Magerstaedt
On the other hand, this is possibly the senile society of the future. Frank Schirrmacher predicted it in a visionary way in his “Methusalem Conspiracy”. The old and very old, whose ever-increasing electoral power ultimately reduces the “democracy” system to absurdity.
The theater building is beautiful, probably renovated in the style of the original condition, red velvet everywhere, gold, red carpet, red wallpaper, garlands, rococo armchairs, warm yellow light from candles and chandeliers. Even the filigree, curved railings are wrapped in red velvet. Excellent! You can still see the imperial box, in which Dieter Dorn is now sitting, high up, directly opposite the stage – but where, one might think, is Sissi?
After the endlessly long break, probably due to the old people, who all hobble with their clattering crutches to the little place, which is probably also covered with red velvet, it is finally a piece from the hospice. A death room. The actress (Anika Page) has no nuances and screams into apathy. Her husband hid in a hole next to the bed. The Last Days of a Dying Actress. Then her lover leaves her too. And that’s it.
Finally staff again
And Feydeau! It goes on without a curtain. The dying awakens – it was all just a nightmare! In reality, she lives in a cheerful married life. Now it shows what the two actors, Anika Page and Michael von Au, are really capable of. They play like they’re free, and Dieter Dorn has to use all his art to rein in them. Because he only wants to gradually increase the pace.
Then he does. Apparently they are just the well-known conflicts between man and woman in a bourgeois marriage, but they are staged with an almost foolhardy lust for life, for quarrels, for fun, for moving fights. The woman allegedly spends too much, the man reprimands her, in reality it is he who squanders the money out of bravado. The woman bitches, the man is annoyed and has stomach pains and debts. And then the woman leans lovingly against him again, at night.
Above all, these bourgeois finally have staff again. A maid, a servant. You also need them if the doors are always to be opened and closed.
The dear old people in the audience, who had been watching with interest for so long and despite all the horror – nobody left during the break – are now being rewarded. She almost snaps off the brocade chairs.
And Dieter Dorn keeps turning the pace screw. A messenger comes and reports that Madame’s mother has died (hence the title “Condolences”). She faints, the servant catches her, the jealous man intervenes, and so on. The maid is woken up, but she slept in her husband’s bed because he was flirting with a nude model at the artists’ ball or something like that. In any case, Monsieur immediately writes to his creditors to inherit soon. Suddenly another door opens, another messenger, now the news that Madame’s mother isn’t dead at all, but that of the neighbor. A mix up! Monsieur curses, everyone runs in confusion, everyone knocks something over, a choreography of never-ending tumult floods the stage and the audience in the last hour of the almost three-hour, first tough and then unprecedentedly entertaining, and thus memorable performance.
Everything revolves around the large double bed, and you understand that marriage equals a double bed. Anika Page is playing crazier and crazier, her partner Michael von Au, just the lazy newt from the hole next to the bed, wins the hearts of the suddenly ageless seniors. Nothing is ever static. Everything crawls back and forth, and all striving and preventing are connected by the false death of the mother, which is increasingly being made fun of. There’s always something happening without it being too over the top.
Why is it, because of the detailed knowledge of the author? He, Feydeau, must have been very tormented by his wife, otherwise he would not have been able to write down the thousand bitches so well. And the mean, boyish, transparent reactions of the men. You can recognize everything, through the centuries.
Brecht can still learn something
But do you suffer because of that? On the contrary. One is lucky (if civilly married) to have someone who shares a real life Feydeau comedy with one. Voluntarily. And you don’t have to languish like a Beckett character.
That was what the ingenious fisherman of men Dieter Dorn wanted to teach us that evening.
Hours before the premiere, he had given this newspaper an interview and talked about his theater life. It had started with Brecht, whom he met in East Berlin after the war and whom he admired beyond measure. He may have learned from him how to educate an audience. Now one would like to think that it would rather be Brecht who could learn from Dieter Dorn.
Joachim Lottmann is a German writer living in Vienna. Next week his book “The Man Without Opinions” will be published, which is controversially discussed as a hidden portrait of the former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
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