Is this what the Omikron Theater looks like this winter? Hybrid events in which those involved with the virus in their bodies are switched to the stage from home and play their part like a news anchor? Or, in this case, like a heavenly influencer. Lina Beckmann, who tested positive on the day of the dress rehearsal of “33 Variations on Haydn’s Skull” in the painter’s hall of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg despite being vaccinated, plays an angel in the man’s anteroom – and proves disembodied by switching on two monitors on the edge of the stage that irony is the trump card even with God. At least until it sounds like criticism of God, then he thunders like Zeus from the upper floor.
Beckmann’s transcendent Ulknummer can even be played aptly from a digitally conveyed distance, as influencers are revered like saints in product-believing layers. But this form of acting as a zoom conference only works as a replacement model as long as the actress is only in quarantine and does not really suffer from “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome”. Since more and more stages have Covid cases in the ensemble, not all of which can play a premiere in such a good mood with the Aquavit bottle in hand as here, the Hamburg emergency solution may convey a wrong picture of the situation in culture.
A mixture of late adolescent jokes, slippery noises and semi-comical slapstick
In this “revue” about Joseph Haydn’s skull, re-enacted by director Viktor Bodo in one day, the grimacing holy arrogance of Lina Beckmann is definitely the easiest fun. What happens between their two monitor faces on stage is more of a mixture of late adolescent jokes, slippery noises and semi-comical slapstick. In his play, Péter Esterházy, who died in 2016, dealt with the curious story that the head of Haydn’s corpse was sawed from the trunk by a follower of the brain surveyor Franz Joseph Gall in 1809 and later passed on several times. Esterházy wrote 33 scenes around this gruesome anecdote about the pseudoscience “phrenology”, which are mixed associatively and mainly revolve around the living musician.
His Hungarian compatriot Bodo now puts these sketches in a ruin with a grand piano and chamber orchestra (stage: Zita Schnábel) and pursues the consistent trivialization of high culture through silliness. Haydn’s friend Mozart (Christoph Jöde) farts his music with a trumpet on the rump, Haydn’s long-time client in Eisenstadt, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy (an ancestor of the author, played here by Samuel Weiss), describes a woman with drooling noises and lascivious grimaces who act like an introduction to catcalling. The ensemble, half of which consists of musicians, who synchronize with the playback of Haydn’s works or adaptations of Guns’n’Roses, Gershwin or John Lennon have to constantly perform imprecise group slapstick. And in addition, Bodo staged Zotiges for Hoho laughter, such as a blow job with the skull under the skirt.
Only the composer himself is a haven of brooding seriousness. Jan-Peter Kampwirth in a long satin skirt and wig (costumes: Fruzsina Nagy) is the only person on stage who can be a little thoughtful and modest. This Haydn almost seems as if the dismantling of his fame through half-baked ideas and flying Mozart balls is embarrassing. And he’s not so wrong with that.