2023-08-01 12:48:24
At some point, around 10:45 p.m. at the latest, even the most willing will be soft-boiled. There they are running again, the women and the men, it doesn’t make a difference. Right, left, against each other – as it has been in German theater Ulrich Rasche standard for a few years. Yes, the man has literally gone through his style – cool, technoid, huge. At the Salzburg Festival he has already put it on Aeschylus’s “Persians”, and his machinery almost burst the neo-rococo stucco frame of the plush state theatre.
This summer, Ulrich Rasche was relocated to Hallein on the Perner Insel, where his three discs can rotate against each other, groaning nonchalantly. And there are also three ring rails on the ceiling, into which five perforated metal columns are hung. Using glaring light strips and a bit of stage fog, they can simulate entire walls behind which the choir effectively disappears.
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Three rings a chorus – we have been seeing Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s enlightenment drama of “Nathan the Wise” for a long time. But when he – effectively shortly before the break, in the most beautiful blue stage – recites his Ring parable, a dainty but powerful striding woman dances next to the somewhat pale Sultan Saladin in a skirt (Nicola Mastroberardino), who is chanting: Valery Tscheplanova, who plays the role relatively took over from Judith Engel at short notice. But there is no fashionable gender here, there is no Nathanin, only a neuter.
Nathan, the wise
The Tscheplanova, who does not lull you to sleep with her slightly grated, suggestive voice but draws your attention, does not present the Nathan/Lessing theses in an extremely clear, concise manner, but sets them up. She allows us to participate in her gradual formation of thoughts while speaking, as Heinrich von Kleist put it a few years later. And has her audience completely under control: every lunge, every calmly formulated word is followed, you stick to her lips.
And even if this severely tested edict of tolerance now seems rhetorically hollow, you believe the story of the father with the three sons, which of course means the three monotheistic world religions, to whom all three are dearest, which is why he has a valuable ring forged so that all three have the same one have and no one recognizes the real one.
Reconnaissance despite fog: The “Nathan” in Salzburg
Source: Salzburg Festival/Monika Rittershaus
The other actors, whether daughter Recha, Saladin, Templar, have a hard time against this art, which is as simple as it is captivating, also because they are of course much stronger supporters of Lessing’s theses. Only Almut Zilcher as Saladin’s sister Sittah succeeds in her few appearances in a subversively critical hovering, a pleasant resistance to the Rasche technique. Rapidity is allowed for a long time, it never fails to impress.
But at some point it no longer runs smoothly, it rattles itself dead. Because the Lessing piece rustles with paper at the good end instead of making drama. So the last three-quarters of an hour drags on from four, although Ulrich Rasche cleverly dialectically sharpened and sharpened his “Nathan” with evil anti-Semitic enlightenment essences of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. These are reserved for the vividly acting chorus, from which Daja, the friar and the patriarch also briefly emerge.
At the good end of the fairytale to this “dramatic poem”, Sara Schwarz’s dark unisex clothes have at times become transparent, colorfully gender-mixed, light-colored. But you’ve long since had enough of the ever-stretched, meaning-busting rapid speaking, underscored by psychedelic, insistent, low-pitched music. Nevertheless, nice to have encountered this theologically strong text from 1779 again.
André Jung pulls out the pillow
The outgoing Salzburg theater director Bettina Hering also has heavy fare in store for the second major premiere of the play for her mostly older audience – alongside “Jedermann”, which can be booked as a permanent folklore event: Karin Henkel has prepared “Amour” for the co-producing Munich Kammerspiele, the one with the golden Cannes -Palme 2012 and the foreign Oscar award-winning Michael Haneke film, staged in the Landestheater. Back then, Haneke created a deeply impressive, precise, cool, almost wordless chamber play, acoustically framed by works by Schubert, Beethoven and Bach, about a couple who were increasingly thrown on themselves, a cinematic plea about the inability, dignity and unconditional devotion of an aging couple.
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Karin Henkel expands this into an initially somewhat meandering, then increasingly collaged reflection on dying with dignity, on being able and having to let go and, of course, on the lack of nursing care. André Jung – with a trembling voice, but still strangely composed (you want to hug him all the time) – is Georges, the man. Anne, the woman, however, is distributed among several actors, an anti-naturalistic measure that, however, makes it possible to expand the subject. Katharina Bach plays Anne most emphatically (who also plays the stunned, desperate daughter), but men and laypeople slip into their roles. The latter are also very present as a chorus of the elderly and the sick, telling of true fates and thus expanding the art construct.
In two hours of stage time there are dry statistics, game scenes and a lot of thoughtfulness and feeling. Karin Henkel skilfully walks the fine line between documentary theater, pamphlet and dramatic construct. She points and raises her finger. The fragile structure is of course held together by André Jung. He pulls out the pillow right from the start – after that you know how this care drama will end. He wants to help but is unable to do so when the partner at his side dwindles both mentally and physically. At the end she can only call out “Help”. Of course it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
#Salzburg #Festival #Amour #Nathan