That there are clever and less clever arrangements of classics can probably be considered a truism. And if one hadn’t already experienced so many flat transfers of large subjects into the present, one would not have been so warned regarding the well-intentioned updates. From Goethe’s “Iphigenie auf Tauris” to Iffi Zenker’s “Lindenstraße” it is sometimes a stone’s throw. But what you might experience on Thursday evening on the Perner Insel in the guest production of the Hamburg Thalia Theater at the Salzburg Festival was a great thought-provoking piece as well as a successful evening of theater where all the stops were pulled out.
What, dramaturge Bednarczyk and director Marciniak ask, makes a myth relevant for the present? Her answer: Probably the fact that it is not an external reason that leads to ruin, but only the inner drive of the people involved, especially in a family group like that around the alleged model Greeks Agamenon, Clytemnestra and Menelaus. It is true that the well-known curse of the gods weighs on the Atrids that up to the fifth generation at least one member of the family will use violence once morest their own clan, resulting in a disastrous consequence of violence and other crimes. However, it is not Orestes’ crime once morest his mother Clytemnestra that interests the authors, but rather the sublime figure of Iphigenia in the tension between the family members.
The sacrifice Iphigenia and an ancient projection
In Euripides Iphigenia stands before us like the ideal sacrifice. Deceived by her father Agamemnon, she refuses to marry Achilles and agrees to her own sacrifice so that the favorable winds for the great war once morest Troy can blow. Artemis is known to save Iphigenia from the slaughterhouse. But the price is a life in exile, in Tauris, far away from one’s eternal homeland, which Goethe famously put in the mocking image of “searching for the land of the Greeks with one’s soul”.
In 2022, however, Iphigenia is no longer looking for the country of her homeland, even if she is stranded in Tauris in the second part of the evening, when the wooden stage is being converted into a water bath, actually recalls her own past and is definitely pursuing an ideal. But Iphigenia knows in the present: the memory of what happened is the only chance to escape fate. Not because you can treat yourself. But because that’s the only way history doesn’t repeat itself.
„People are stuck in their lifes“
The ‘act of sacrifice’ of this Iphigenia is the role of the therapist from a perspective of lack of illusions. “People are stuck in their lives,” says Oda Thormeyer as the older Iphigenia, while her daughter Rosa Thormeyer plays the young Iphigenia in the unhappy family and tries to give a name to the deeds she has suffered. Both deliver a great performance on this strong ensemble evening.
In this play, Iphigenia was abused by Menelaus (Stefan Stern). And Agamemnon? He (Sebastian Zimmler) is a professor of ethics, a Kierkegaard expert and possesses the theoretical knowledge of good and evil. Above all, however, he knows how the victim feels following an act he has experienced – a loss of meaning is imposed from outside, he announces. His daughter Iphigenia is the apple of his eye; he, the thinker, is unhappily married to an actress, Klytämnestra (Christiane von Poelnitz), while he had coveted his brother’s wife, Helena (Lisa-Marie Sommerfeld).
It’s always the others who explain the abuse
When Iphigenia tells of her uncle’s abuse, Agamemnon is concerned above all regarding his own reputation, since he has just published his magnum opus on all questions of ethics. Together with his brother, but also his wife, who, like him, only found out regarding the abuse late, he is looking for a face-saving solution for the entire family. And that means silence to the outside world.
Iphigenie’s flight to Tauris is the only chance to escape this cover-up and to escape from the burden that the others always determine the victim’s narrative. “Don’t call my name yours” is the central sentence of the evening. Because no matter how many fundamental questions this evening may be very clever, very dense – and also brought to the stage with brilliant acting. The key is to escape the narrative of others.
When Iphigenia, as an older woman, meets her older brother Orestes (Jirka Zett) in Tauris, who is reliving the crime committed on his mother before her, she realizes that the outer drama before the story would always be valued more than the inner, hushed-up one. Nevertheless, and this is perhaps her big, strong soul, she manages to give Orestes a message at the end: Take off your role, put it down – and place it far away from you in the room!
A notice:
“Iphigenia” can still be seen on August 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 17 and 28 as part of the festival on Perner Insel in Hallein.
The end of the outside perspective
The great achievement of this piece is indeed the therapy the authors bring to the centuries-old reading of this material. It is no longer the outside perspective that decides what takes the power of interpretation away from all forms of projection. Iphigenia appears twice as an acting and reflecting ego. She knows she will not change what happened to her. Also that she cannot stop the further course of her own story in her generation. But she is powerful enough to stand once morest lore. In this sense, it is not just an uprising once morest a “patriarchal system”, as the program booklet proclaims. It is the connection with the other victim, her brother, in a rebellion once morest the parents, who namely frame the family history in such a way that the children actually have no room for maneuver.
The parents, they don’t live their children’s lives, just their own. Just as the children want the option and freedom to shed the intended family role, the curse (!). To fail in your own life – or to fail yourself. A clever evening that was sometimes so dense that it almost didn’t fit into the almost three hours of the performance.
