“Are you despairing of inflation and lack of money?” It says at the beginning of the dramatization of Maria Lazar’s novel “The Natives by Maria Blut”, which premiered on Friday evening in the Academy Theater. Answer: “It doesn’t have to be.” What follows in the next two hours could play today, but is actually located in Austria of the Dollfuss era. In her direction, Lucia Bihler highlights a society caught between Catholicism and nationalism.
The 35-year-old Munich director, who was resident director at the Berlin Volksbühne between 2019 and 2021, recently impressed at the Academy Theater with her garish staging of Thomas Bernhard’s “Die Jagdgesellschaft”. This time she stages the rediscovered interwar work of the Expressionist Jewish author Lazar in a stirring manner. Again, the protagonists are in latex, but this time in yellow, translucent stylized leather pants by costume designer Victoria Behr. The very red-cheeked, very blond residents of the Maria Blut pilgrimage site live under the outstretched arms of an oversized Maria of God flanked by two angels (stage: Jessica Rockstroh) and, due to the prevailing inflation and the impending closure of the local canning factory, entrust their last savings to an entrepreneur , who wants to produce “space power” in the factory and thus achieve prosperity.
But what is this “space power?”: The off-screen advertising slogan provides information: “Space power from Schellbach is the technology of the future. It converts elementary power into usable energy.” Sounds a lot like metaphysics, and in a village where Saint Mary is the linchpin of social life, there is fertile ground for it. Maria Lazar (1895-1948) wrote the novel, part of which was published in Bertolt Brecht’s exile magazine “Das Wort” in 1937, in Danish exile, to which she had already fled in 1933. From a distance, she drew a meticulous psychogram of a society on the eve of the Second World War, in which resentment and distrust are the order of the day and the Jewish population fears for their lives.
It is played on the stage of the Academy Theater in a frame made of light bulbs, which light up glaringly between the often very short scenes. Bihler, who took care of the dramatization together with Alexander Kerlin, relies on a well-dosed voiceover from the off (Stefanie Dvorak), water-head-sized masks for the “natives” and a rapid multiple cast of the protagonists. Philipp Hauß shines with his bleached mane and mustache as Doctor Lohmann, who is viewed suspiciously by the natives because he is obviously godless, while his son (Jonas Hackmann) has long been moving through the village with the Nazis. Devoted to the doctor’s side is his housekeeper Toni (also Dvorak), who gets caught in the crossfire because of her Czech origins. Things are even worse for his Jewish friend, the lawyer Meyer-Löw, whom Dorothee Hartinger brings to life with impressive Yiddish.
The Heberger family, shaken by poverty and blinded by the “Space Power” promise of salvation, is prototypical for the natives. While the old innkeeper (Robert Reinagl, who is also the village priest) puts the last of his money into shares, his pious daughter Notburga (Lili Winderlich) hangs on the skirts of the Mother of God, to whom she confesses that her brother Vinzenz defected to the Nazis. Jonas Hackmann is convincing in the role of the physically and mentally handicapped young man who can only stand up to his full height as soon as he learns to raise his hand in the Hitler salute. Towards the end, the direction manages to create a strong image that makes this dynamic tangible. Dvorak, in turn, slips into the role of Fraulein Reindl’s strapping Nazi bride.
As if the multiple roles – each very strongly drawn – weren’t enough, the ensemble members at the edge of the stage also take turns speaking the texts of the natives, who indulge in gossip and rumors behind their heavy masks. And so Bihler makes the text shine with the small, strong ensemble, whereby the strong optical abstraction does not distract, but rather underlines the dangerous atmosphere in Austro-Fascism. With “The Natives by Maria Blut”, after “The Executioner”, the Burgtheater is once again rediscovering the Viennese author, whose work has been credited to the small Viennese publisher The Forgotten Book for several years. A good decision that was rewarded with long lasting applause.
(SERVICE – “The natives of Maria Blut” by Maria Lazar, stage version by Lucia Bihler (also director) and Alexander Kerlin. Stage: Jessica Rockstroh, costumes: Victoria Behr. With Stefanie Dvorak, Philipp Hauß, Jonas Hackmann, Robert Reinagl, Dorothee Hartinger and Lili Winderlich. Further dates: February 3, 9 and 2. )
