2023-07-30 14:10:01
Anyone who hires director Ulrich Rasche knows what’s coming: no differentiated scene creation, but a thorough examination of great theater literature, spoken to the rhythm of platforms rotating with and once morest each other. Anyone who doesn’t march along incessantly in this machine theater will be rotated away from attention.
And then this time Rasche allowed himself to cast a woman in the title role in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s classic of enlightenment and tolerance, “Nathan the Wise”, which premiered in 1783. At the second drama premiere of the Salzburg Festival on Friday on the Perner Island in Halle, it didn’t matter following just a few minutes that this time, with the outstanding Valery Tscheplanowa, no man had leased paternal wisdom.
“The Jew will be burned!” thundered the chorus of sinister, black-clad figures (costumes: Sara Schwartz). The rabble-rousers are turned into the foreground by the stage mechanics, as if a social network were sitting at the buttons that rewards hatred with attention. The Jew Nathan brought up the Christian girl Recha as his own child as a Jew. “Outrage!” the mob thundered. The fact that Recha, who was rescued from a fire, would have grown up without her parents without Nathan’s care is irrelevant to the blind complainants. mental insanity before the welfare of the child.
The alleged crime remained secret until a young Christian Templar (Mehmet Atesci) fell in love with Recha.
Rasche integrates room-high, also rotating towers into the mechanics that run like clockwork. Gleaming spotlights and glowing walls emerge from them, opening up new spaces. A bright vertical ray announces Nathan’s monumental ring parable in dialogue with the originally doubting Sultan (Nicola Mastroberardino). Before that, Nathan and the Sultan marched towards each other for minutes without getting even a step closer. The parable of equality that we are all brothers and sisters and that no religion is entitled to exclusive truths has seldom been dissected so intensely and overwhelmingly.
Photo: BARBARA GINDL (APA)
Five musicians (Carsten Brocker, Christopher Lübeck/each keyboard, Katelyn King, Spela Mastnak/each percussion, Thomsen Merkel/bass, synthesizer) give the tugging for the truth the basic tone of a gloomy techno party that has progressed far into the night. The ensemble moves synchronously. The stoic arm position reduces the game to facial expressions and words. Julia Windischbauer is in her element here. In the role of Recha, the 26-year-old from Linz, who is moving from the Deutsches Theater Berlin to the Burgtheater in Vienna in October, creates a panopticon of feelings with just her eyes and articulation that reflects the defensiveness of a young woman, always just being the property of someone else. projected in great colors. In Windischbauer’s shared scenes with Cheplanowa – both of whom stood in for sick colleagues at the start of rehearsals – the dialogues grow wings.
What does not apply to the entire production: With four hours (including a break), Rasche exploited the accuracy of the text by 60 minutes too long. “Help me,” Nathan says at the end. It sounds like a call from all those who have been discriminated once morest and persecuted in human history. The audience, decimated following the break, applauded standing up.
Conclusion: A theater and literature festival, but not a scene festival. This “Nathan” gets to the root of the hatred, but it’s still too long.
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