"Feeling Faust" at the Munich Volkstheater: Goethe, come here!

Created: 01/11/2022, 09:15

Convincing ensemble: "Feeling Faust" at the Munich Volkstheater.

© Gabriela Neeb/Munich Volkstheater

In the Munich Volkstheater, director Claudia Bossard has adapted Goethe's classic and brought it to the stage as "Feeling Faust".

Read our premiere review here:

Goethe himself is to blame.

In his “Faust” he finally lets Faust speak the winged words: “Feeling is everything;

Name is smoke and mirrors.” And that's exactly what the Munich Volkstheater has now done.

According to the motto "Take the classics at their word", director Claudia Bossard brought "Feeling Faust" to the stage there, namely "Based on motifs from Goethe's Faust I and Faust II", as the subtitle explains.

"Feeling Faust" is based on "Motifs from Goethe's Faust I and Faust II"

The approach to the over-drama of German literature, reduced to two hours, is only a distillate or derivative.

You have seen many such essences of the original, sometimes high-percentage, sometimes diluted to the point of homeopathic.

And Claudia Bossard also pursues this alchemical approach, which, like Faust himself, wants to see "all active power and seed", but she proceeds even more radically than previous attempts: only a few fragments remain of the text, wildly jumbled up, without considering the sequence of scenes.

To compensate, there is a lot of own text and above all a lot of body language of the actors.

Because the principle of this effective and technically perfect performance is a very subjective feeling for and empathizing with Goethe's "Faust", which opens up associative worlds of images and thoughts - scenarios that, beyond mere language, reflect the spirit of the piece in the moody or at least half catch it hope by alienating it beyond recognition.

This search for the core of the poodle results in a wild Walpurgis Night, a firework of furious or infantile ideas, a discourse on “sexuality, floristry” and “snub heart biting”, to which colorful psychedelic images of naked women waft across flat screens and the back of the stage.

Or cute cat videos, namely when a kind of hit fist warbles the tearjerker “Feelings” with pink lighting.

Up to the shocking variety of CNN-style shots of wars, catastrophes, mountains of rubbish around the world are shown, which trigger just as strong feelings, i.e. "feelings", at the push of a button.

Munich Volkstheater: Gretchen is deleted

Gretchen is completely deleted, but instead we see how the young man from the schoolboy scene with Mephisto transforms into a dog named Goethe, who, in white fine-rib underwear, threatens to escape and is energetically called back: "Goethe, you come here! Of course, the actors also lose themselves in terribly Faustian musings about what holds the world together at its core, but only come to the conclusion: “The dinosaurs have already drunk the water that is in you.” To exclaim with a sigh: “So Lots of subtext, thousands of references!” And at the end, to the sounds of Wagner's “Tristan”, there's a colorful pantyhose party in the sterile white arena of the stage set, which is only adorned with a withered cardboard palm tree.

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"Faust" is no longer compulsory at Bavarian schools

It all started so harmlessly with the parody of a literary talk show whose guests lamented that Goethe's "Faust" is no longer on the curriculum in Bavaria either.

This feigned indignation bumps into a better school cabaret in places – only Janek Maudrich as the belching writer really gets the hang of it.

And it's only when Maral Keshavarz, who just sat there silently, suddenly shouts out Faust's opening monologue in a fit of rage and (attention, symbolism!) has the studio scenery cleared away, does the evening really get going and tip over into a fast-paced, safely timed Faust frenzy, which as rebirth of the tragedy from the spirit of the video clip.

Volkstheater: Long celebration after the premiere of "Feeling Faust"

And it's definitely not "the spirit that always denies," it's far too colourful, shrill, vital for that on this evening, which is silly and touching, clever and funny, gaga and brilliant (at least a little bit).

Sure, you can only fully appreciate the open, anarchic flow of ideas and associations if you know the order (i.e. the original), which is deliberately shaken up and chopped up here - because the desired deviation from the norm is only possible against the background of the norm such identifiable and appealing.

In this respect, future generations, for whom "Faust" was no longer part of the curriculum, should only have half the fun (if at all) in this kind of theatre.

In complete contrast to today's viewers, for whom "Feeling Faust" was apparently "a good feeling in terms of feeling",

to put it in the immortal words of a footballer.

In any case, the audience thanked him with long cheers.

(More from the Munich Volkstheater? Read our reviews of the premieres of "Pussy Sludge" and "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" here.)

Alexander Altman