For the Burgtheater, the text, originally written for the “Year of Remembrance 1988” on the occasion of 50 years of Austria’s “annexation” to Germany, is something like the piece of the hour in view of the current resurgence of right-wing and right-wing extremist parties. It was to be expected that Castorf would not do a good job of carrying out a political assignment. And so he leaves out almost everything that would be possible to point out the explosiveness of the piece today, in which the family of a Jewish returnee loudly complains about the continued effects of anti-Semitism on the day of his funeral.
Of course, the director, who grew up in the GDR, is an anti-fascist – and that’s why the evening certainly has a message. Fascism threatens always and everywhere, that’s what it could say. The fact that he locates the threat primarily in the USA can be easily argued in view of the possible re-election of Donald Trump, who called for the Capitol storm.
The evening takes us back to America both visually and textually, for which, in addition to the stage design, texts by the US author Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) are also responsible, which Castorf integrated into the piece as well as impressions of a trip by the later US President John F. Kennedy by Nazi Germany. A giant photograph of enthusiastic crowds at a Nazi rally site forms the backdrop, while posters from 1939 call true American patriots to a mass rally at Madison Square Garden.
But the texts remain foreign bodies and, like the excerpts from “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn”, which Franz Pätzold delivers in bravura monologues, are sometimes more concerned with the basic themes of grief and death than with the political misanalysis that affects a people’s desire for strong leadership couldn’t be a bad thing. The two Schuster professor brothers – one has just killed himself, the other is bitterly settling accounts with Austria – are not portrayed by Castorf as victims, but are also shown in their negative characteristics. Apart from the fact that they don’t even appear as characters. This production takes every bit of freedom in both the stage design and the allocation of text and roles.
Set designer Aleksandar Denić has placed two scaffolds on the revolving stage of the Burgtheater that support images of large-scale American icons: the mafia boss Al Capone in front of the US flag and the actress Marilyn Monroe in the famous scene during the filming of “The Seven Year Itch” , as she stood over a subway exhaust duct. There is actually a subway station installed on the lower stage of the Burgtheater, namely the Borough Hall Station in Brooklyn – including a subway car with landscapes passing by the windows.
These are magical moments of a performance that bring a real flood of images and ideas that are not always coherent and sometimes go completely wrong: that not only the dinner of the third act takes place in a concrete bunker from which the live video is broadcast , but gas is suddenly introduced is just as tasteless as a shooting scene. Adriana Braga Peretzki’s costumes sometimes suggest that the family is not coming from the funeral, but from a glamorous ball event.
However, Birgit Minichmayr’s outfit for her big Robert monologue in the second act shoots the bird: she holds him in a tight corset with gauze bandages, as if she had just emerged from her sarcophagus as a mummy. The fact that this scene – including Inge Maux and Marie-Luise Stockinger as sisters Anna and Olga – still works excellently shows not only Minichmayr’s stupendous acting skills, but also that this “Heldenplatz” is usually most convincing when it really is “Heroesplatz”. played and spoken.
Of course, this is not always clear, because the text and characters were divided among the six actors, including Marcel Heuperman and Branko Samarovski. They are all there with full commitment, including the typical Castorf swipes about the director’s unreasonable demands and “private” comments to one another.
The premiere was met with boos, bravos and lots of applause shortly before midnight on Saturday. As expected, the evening differed in every respect from the scandal-making premiere by premiere guest Claus Peymann on November 4, 1988 at the same location. “I’ll let something explode. And after the explosion comes reconstruction,” Frank Castorf, who directed Elfriede Jelinek and Peter Handke at the Burg- and Akademietheater in 2021, had promised in advance. After its reconstruction, Heldenplatz was no longer recognizable. But at least he now has a subway connection.
(By Wolfgang Huber-Lang/APA)
(SERVICE – “Heldenplatz” by Thomas Bernhard, director: Frank Castorf, set design: Aleksandar Denić, costumes: Adriana Braga Peretzki, music: William Minke. With: Marcel Heuperman, Inge Maux, Birgit Minichmayr, Franz Pätzold, Branko Samarovski, Marie- Luise Stockinger. Burgtheater. Next performances: February 20th and 24th and March 3rd, 22nd and 28th, www.burgtheater.at)
