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Ernst Stötzner in “Noise.
Blind vision.
Blind people see! «: Ischgl orgy with sex doll
Photo:
Matthias Horn / dpa
It starts again! A real theater premiere, live and in front of (halved) an audience. The time had come on Saturday evening at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus, with the world premiere of Elfriede Jelinek's »Lärm. Blind vision. Blind people see! «, Her new Suada, the subject of course: the pandemic, director: Karin Beier, the house's general manager. Cheeky mood on the sidewalk in front of the theater, "Where did you get the drinks from?", The admission procedure almost feels like a prelude with audience participation: put on your mask, stand in line, show your card and quick test result, leave your address, put on an adhesive bracelet, so that Virus does not come in even after the break.
Inside, the evening begins with the invisible pathogen in complete darkness.
For the first twenty minutes you can see: nothing.
You only hear voices from all directions.
There is talk of "atomic accelerators", of the structure of the world ("Man still belongs to the simpler models") and of breath ("If he is gone, you are dead").
Experts talk shop about spike proteins, Jana from Kassel is allowed to compare herself with Sophie Scholl again, someone claims that the disease does not even exist, and Merkel warns several times, "Don't believe a rumor".
Ischgl: "The disease comes from this hole"
It's the cacophony of the past few months, plus a few first bonmots from Jelinek's new text area, artfully cut together to form a concert of words. In the middle of it all, Jelinek's commitment to the technique of sampling, spoken by an actress: With her, you can never be sure what she has drawn and what has been "copied and talked about", warns the Nobel Prize winner.
Lights on, now we can really start: We are in a pound après-ski hut, on the right the counter, on the left a gallery, in the middle of it all men in lederhosen and women in shiny anoraks. The Ischgl scenario, drawn in bright colors: "This is where the disease comes from," as the saying goes. It's about the bartender who was sick but kept working anyway, it's about the excesses of the party, there is a brass music trio to which everyone dance ecstatically.
But Jelinek's new text is also about factory farming. About meat factories like that of Tönnies, which continued to run during the pandemic and also became super-spreading places. On monitors and a large screen you can see the assembly line slaughter and processing of pigs, pork halves are dragged onto the stage. All in all, it's about man's excessiveness, his immense greed, his cattle brutality, topics that Jelinek has always worked on.
That is one level of content. In addition, and above all, it is also about conspiracy theories, widely exhibited, but of course somehow already depicted in a satirical way. An actress disguised as a ski bunny calls a miracle healer and has the virus expelled over the phone, while actor Lars Rudolph, as a confused pseudo-scientist, is allowed to talk about the virus as a bioweapon and about Chinese secret plans to take control of the world; There is of course talk of implanted chips and dangerous transmitter masts that are better burned down. And it's also about the Rothschilds, about the Jewish world conspiracy, and three actors disguised as ultra-Orthodox Jews run across the stage with Schtreimel and hooked noses. Satire is allowed to do everything? Of course, Ms. Beier.But do you really need this cheap pseudo-provocation?
From the transmitter mast to the sail mast to the pig mast
The confusion of topics is held together by the Kirke myth, Homer's story of the sorceress who receives the stranded Odysseus and his companions on her island and transforms the sailors into pigs - Jelinek also weaves this thread into her Suada.
From the masks to the transmitter masts to Odysseus' sailing mast to the pig mast, that is roughly the train of thought.
The equipment team (stage: Duri Bischoff, costumes: Wicke Naujoks, video: Severin Renke) depicts all these levels in a virtuoso manner, Karin Beier nimbly jumps back and forth between them, one number follows the other. You feel like you used to be in one of those perfectly staged stadium concerts, where at some point the suspicion creeps up that the elaborate show is possibly supposed to cover up the fact that the band's current album is not their strongest. The only thing missing is the flying Pink Floyd pig. (But there are inflatable sex dolls for that.)
The multimedia highlight thunderstorm leaves hardly any time to reflect - for example on the question of how many overlaps there really are between the partying skiers and the sinister lateral thinkers. And whether you can really get over the conspiracy theorists by letting them take the stage for long stretches of the evening, albeit linguistically reshaped by a Jelinek. And do all the bourgeois educated people in the audience really go home after the three-hour show with the knowledge that the social division that has become even more obvious as a result of Corona is a problem? That is what the evening is actually aiming at, if you can believe the contribution of the dramaturge Rita Thiele in the program. It is more likely that they will go home feeling fortunate that they are completely different.If only because they would never put pork chops on their grill, only innocent organic lamb.
"Noise. Blind vision. See the blind! «. Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, next performances on June 10, 11 and 19.