If the director Clemens Sienknecht would be offended, if you would call him a nerd? Anyway, it's wonderful to imagine him as a teenager in the schoolyard commenting on the whole thing with the right song whenever someone told a story or reported a problem. The girlfriend left you? "If you leave me now ..." The sister annoying? "Hey little sister ..."
Sienknecht, who has stopped studying music, is obviously a walking jukebox. And nerd is often just another word for genius: The man can not only reenact songs, he also composes himself and plays at least a dozen instruments.
Hamburg has been using these talents as a stage musician since 1993, but it was not until "Effi Briest - albeit with a different text and also a different melody" that he found the perfect form at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus in 2015. The evening was invited to the Theatertreffen and such an audience hit that he switched to the big stage of the theater. 2017 was followed by "Anna Karenina", also a hit.
And now another evening on the same principle: Sienknecht and his ensemble are fabricating a radio program that has a famous story on the subject, this time it's "Die Nibelungen". The framework of the radio show justifies that the music content must be at least as large as the text portion (and makes the whole thing entrancingly entertaining).
The right pop song for every situation
For example, Kriemhild and Siegfried (Ute Hannig and Sienknecht themselves), after they have come together, sing together "Wannabe" from the Spice Girls: "Tell me what you want ...", while Gunther (Yorck Dippe) after the unsuccessful wedding night with Brunhild in Bee Gees voice whines: "Tragedy!" Note: There is no situation between heaven and earth, for which there is not the right pop song.
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"Nibelungen" as a pop theater: DJ Wotan on the micAs a spectator you do not have to know the story of the clan at the court of Burgundy in order to come along - Sienknecht and his troupe play the most important scenes of the story. In between, they sometimes carry the action straight up to the ramp or gather around the turntable to devoutly listen to the sonorous fairytale-uncle voice of Michael Prelle, who tells another chapter in the story. The whole thing is articulated by bizarre traffic reports about six-meter congestion, "news from three centuries" and live sung advertising jingles, microphone Michael Wittenborn alias DJ Wotan.
Thus Sienknecht and his authors Barbara Bürk and Sybille Meier succeed in carrying through the whole Nibelungen saga in less than two hours: Gunther's conquest of Brunhild, in which Siegfried ("Siggi star guest") secretly helps him, from the discovery of this fraud, from the indignation of the women over this lousy number to Kriemhild's bloody revenge, in which the whole clan is destroyed in the end.
The Nibelung as a star warrior
Sometimes the Nibelungen speak Middle High German, sometimes in swollen Friedrich-Hebbel verses, sometimes brashly-today. Also the music changes cheerfully between all time levels, whereby Sienknecht, born in 1964, clearly has a preference for the disco beats of the late seventies. The stage and the costumes by Anke Grot are also the most beautiful Seventies, from the brown imitation leather armchairs to Kriemhild's blond hair blower. The studio with all its flashing buttons and green shimmering screens reminds of the command center of Captain Kirk, also the Nibelungen turn into star warriors; probably because for Sienknecht as a child of this time "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" were influential.
Not only visually amazingly well - Grot makes smart connections between spacey spacesuits, sparkling disco jump suits and shimmering armor - but also in terms of content: It's the eternal battle between good and evil, which is fought here and there, and the family secrets with their fatal consequences determine again and again in a bad way the big politics.
As light and ironic as his show is, Sienknecht takes the story so seriously. That is part of his secret of success. Persiflage and homage are not only musically balanced - a tightrope walk, which otherwise dominates only Christoph Marthaler, the master and inventor of this genre. Sienknecht has worked with him since 1993.
This becomes particularly clear in the "Nibelungen" - but with a different text and also different melody "by Brunhild, in the scene after the night in which Gunther finally defeated her (with Siegfried under the cloak of invisibility). Lina Beckmann plays a humiliated, broken woman whose predatory roar has turned into a silent scream. So completely without the festive kitsch around it becomes clear how rare: What took place there at night was nothing but a rape.
If one has followed how much the Nibelungen Festival in Worms struggles to assert the ancient Nordic legend as a timeless piece that is somehow still relevant for the present, then one will only admire Sienknecht and his ensemble a little more for their evening , At the end, the team announces: Next, the Bible will be turned into a radio show. Good applause.
"The Nibelungen - but with different lyrics and also different melodies": Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, next performances on the 5th, 12th and 24th of October, www.schauspielhaus.de