Photos: Burgtheater / Matthias Horn
VIENNA / Burgtheater:
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM by William Shakespeare
Co-production with the Ruhrtriennale
Premiere in Vienna: September 3, 2023
William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” recipe for success has been known for centuries. Three levels – a magical forest with fairies, elves and goblins, a human world where two young couples make each other love hell hot, and the dodel party of craftsmen who absolutely want to play theater. Networking this and unfolding the “magic” of the piece, as Max Reinhardt once conjured it up, was considered the trademark of the work.
The theater makers of our time are really no longer interested in that. Barbara Frey, who after her departure as director of the Ruhrtriennale (where she last designed this production together with the Burgtheater) would have liked to see herself as director of the Burgtheater, has not exactly made the audience of the house happy with her last productions. So she had the actors silly tripping through Edgar Allan Poe like marionettes and drove out all life with black zombies in Arthur Schnitzler’s “The Wide Land”.
Something similar happened again this time. In our cliché-rich time, when one should (may) only say the “right thing”, i.e. what is ideologically accepted, it is apparently enough to throw in the terms “climate catastrophes”, “patriarchal systems of rule” and “gender-fluid identities”, and everything “fits”. , what comes to mind.
The “forest” of Barbara Frey consequently exists (stage: Martin Zehetgruber) of four wrecked cars half buried in the ground and four puny trees. There is also a barn, which applies to the Athens locations after rotation. So much for the climate catastrophe.
Without further introduction, the radically shortened play (two and a quarter hours without a break) threatens the father’s death if the daughter does not marry the man she wants (although with Shakespeare one is in Athens, not in present-day Turkey). So much for the patriarchal systems of violence. Yes, and Oberon and Titania are Sylvie Rohrer and Markus Scheumann, in that order, she dressed as a man, he as a woman (with a headdress so high, as if one had oriented oneself on the wigs of Marie Antoinette). These are then the gender-fluid identities, without it being clear what the benefit of the piece is. But you do everything in a contemporary and correct “right” way.
The catastrophe of the evening, however, is – also given as a specification for the production by the Burgtheater text – in the “nocturnal states of mind” (which is why it is usually gloomy on stage) the “struggling to speak their language”. This means that in the rotting car graveyard (the best element of the production: the lighting by Rainer Küng, which meaningfully separates the scenes) there is no “speaking”, as is usual in the theater (and for the people who are sitting downstairs and have paid, also necessary). Rather, the text is scurried over in whispering parlando, at best in mezzavoce, so that one does not understand the latest of it anyway. This affectation, which no doubt wants to pass itself off as “style”, pretty much kills the play and the actors too.
It is incomprehensible what an audience can offer nowadays. Are people just too well behaved or too frightened or just too cowardly that a voice wasn’t raised that would have thundered “Speak properly!” in the direction of the stage? It is clear that neither characters nor plots can be developed without language. The losses are enormous.
One could now try to “interpret” what is on offer, but with the keywords on offer everything has been said anyway. In the Burgtheater one could have expected earlier that the actors would save “everything” anyway, but those times are over. Either they can’t or they can’t.
What a pity about the quartet of young lovers. None plays into the hearts (or even interests) of the viewers – not the stuffed ones Meike Droste as Hermia and the not at all interesting Lili Winderlich as Helena, not Marie-Luise Stockinger (genderfluid!) as Lysander, and the guest from Berlin Langston Uibel is as good as non-existent as Demetrius. This quartet seeps away somewhere in the action.
There is – with every sentence he speaks, no matter what role: incomprehensible – Markus Scheumann at the end (in street clothes) not a very princely Theseus, as Titania before that it is obvious, but not convincing for a second (the scene with the donkey is completely lost, is almost incomprehensible). Similarly next to it, because profileless, is Sylvie Rohrer, sometimes man (Oberon,) sometimes woman (Hippolyta). As the ruling couple of the former enchanted forest (no trace of magic) they have a servant in Puck who has become one of the most famous figures in Shakespeare’s cosmos (perhaps even in world literature). Dorothee Hartinger usually stands around with hunched shoulders like a scolded child and doesn’t make it clear for a second who this goblin is. (The actress who resigned the role in this production has shown unerring instinct.)
Yes, and then there are the craftsmen. Such an accumulation of cloudy cups, of which (with one exception) not a single profile develops, has never been experienced. What “can” this crowd do for the theater if they are cast and led comedicly with top-class talent! Here they are so boring that one feels like falling asleep during their final “piece” out of protest.
But wait, there’s still the exception. There is one actor of the evening who not only manages to be understandable despite the prescribed piano whispering. Oliver Nagele as a slip conveys a few moments of magic when he talks about “Zettels Traum” – yes, that’s how it should be, that’s how it should be. What Barbara Frey offers is an artificial surrogate of other offers that have nothing to do with the piece.
The applause sounded good nonetheless. It’s gotten so far that the audience doesn’t know any better. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t deserve better.
Renate Wagner
2023-09-03 21:49:33
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