As of: January 21, 2024, 1:41 p.m
By: Michael Schleicher
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The blowing snow is just as inconsequential as the debate about the state of Europe: Jan Meeno Jürgens fights against wind machines as Hans Castorp in the Munich Volkstheater.
© Gabriela Neeb/Münchner Volkstheater
“The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann was first published 100 years ago.
Claudia Bossard has now staged the novel at the Munich Volkstheater.
Our criticism:
The mountain calls.
The climb in the Munich Volkstheater takes at least four hours with a break, which would definitely have been quicker.
But the rope team is on the ball, in great shape and, on top of that, fearless.
In addition, Romy Springsguth opened up the width and depth of the stage in the Schlachthofviertel so that we can regularly marvel at tableaux that are absurd, crazy, touching, hilarious or wonderfully stupid.
This view then compensates for the idleness that exists in Claudia Bossard's production of Thomas Mann's “The Magic Mountain”.
“The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann was published in 1924
Last season, the Swiss director staged both parts of Goethe's “Faust” in the same location.
“Feeling Faust” – despite some weaknesses – was wrongly rejected by the audience and has already disappeared from the repertoire.
Now Bossard has taken Mann's novel, which was published 100 years ago, and used the “Magic Mountain” as a quarry;
an admittedly obvious but apt image.
From the story of the aspiring Hamburg engineer Hans Castorp, who visits his cousin in the lung sanatorium in the Davos Alps for three weeks, but remains fascinated by the illness and scenery for seven years, she has broken out the sequences, sentences and characters that are useful to her.
So it tells - sometimes reminiscent of Tarantino, sometimes Kubrick - of a well-off society that withdraws as much as possible from the hustle and bustle of the “flatlands” so as not to have to seriously deal with what threatens “down in life”.
Debates about ways out of Europe's dilemma - be they idealistic-humanistic, religious or totalitarian - remain show battles in the proverbial thin air, or alternatively on the slackline.
Thomas Mann once wrote this under the influence of the First World War;
Of course, the leap into the present is not a particularly strenuous one.
The ensemble of the Munich Volkstheater carries the “Magic Mountain”
Bossard does this most forcefully in the only scene in which things get really tight: scout Settembrini is standing there with Castorp in a narrow box, gradually other figures crowd in and start analyzing the conditions.
However, since the world has little time left, the sentences stumble, tumble, fall and race out of Settembrini's mouth.
With this Italian, Jakob Immervoll succeeds in creating a wonderful figure drawing that combines loving caricature and serious interest.
He carries the evening as well as the always convincing Nina Steils as Dr.
Krokowski, the doctor with a psychoanalytic approach: “The body is warm, the psyche is not yet.” Jan Meeno Jürgens allows his Castorp to understandably immerse himself in the secrets and passions of clinical life;
He finds a robust counterpart in Steffen Link as Castorp's cousin Ziemßen.
This “Magic Mountain” impresses above all with its ensemble performance;
Only in some scenes is the arc overstretched.
Here it would have been up to Bossard to slow down, channel and organize.
That would have been urgently needed, especially on the vast expanse of this magnificent stage - and would also have helped the text's comprehensibility.
These three in particular ensure order in the four hours: Anton Nürnberg as the hall daughter and Lorenz Hochhuth's concierge hardly have any part in the text, but are essential for the production to function.
And finally there is Alexander Yannilos on percussion and sound machine.
He gives the production its own rousing heartbeat.
The man knows rhythm - and keeps it until the fatal end.