Enter Fricka, Wotan’s wife. Clad in a deceptively innocent white, she towers above all thanks to a Marge Simpson-style towering hairstyle. With every movement of the temperamental goddess, the thing shakes more and more, until it finally loses its footing and lurches dangerously around the noble’s head. Two or three quick moves for a crazy arrangement, finally the construct is secured with two strands of hair knotted under the nose – and Gabi Rothmüller pulls through her performance as if it had all been planned for the staging of “Siegfried – Götterweiß und Heldenblut “, a production of the Munich Lustspielhaus, can now be seen in the Altes Kino Ebersberg.
At the end of the screening, Alexander Liegl, who can also be seen as Burgundy King Gunther and “Wutzwerg” Alberich, will point out to the audience that they had “experienced moments that only existed today”. That is more than a gentle understatement for the fact that this ensemble, which is deeply rooted in the Ebersberger Group of Valtorta rooted, does not see itself as a reproduction of given texts, but takes “playing” on stage literally, right down to its most innocent and powerful variant at the same time, improvisation. You can’t laugh and catch your breath as quickly as they deliver.
There are also idiots and pincers on the Walhalla, and at times everyone can’t see through
The fact that each member of the ensemble also has multiple roles intensifies the action on stage immensely. Rothmüller, who also directs, delivers a showpiece of a bickering goddess’ wife on the one hand and a scheming maiden at the Burgundy court. David Lindermeier covers up the marginal differences between God Wotan and his daughter, Valkyrie Brünhilde, with the nonchalance of a battle-hardened stage god. Constanze Lindner is so passionate and unflinchingly Kriemhild, as if she were born as the same. Finally, Alexander Liegl provides the credible proof that the difference between a dream ship captain and a Germanic king is not worth mentioning, but gives birth to a whole catalog of bizarre comedy.
Such lively bowling is good for the classic material from the Germanic heaven of gods. From the consecration of the heavenly nobility and the exaggeration of its members, as celebrated by Wagner in mighty operas, this performance in Ebersberg shatters all shiny shells with joyful, irreverent straightforwardness and penetrates to the human, all too human core of the typology: There are morons at the Walhalla too and pincers, some are more pretty, others less so, things sometimes go straight and sometimes crooked, and at times they all just don’t see through to each other anymore.
A divine comedy, like something out of a textbook that doesn’t exist, which is why we have to rely solely on the imagination and the power of interpretation of the collective of authors. A duty that Manfred O. Tauch, Gabi Rothmüller and Alexander Liegl fulfill with the energy of a giga power plant. The latter, in his role as Alberich, describes the supposed working atmosphere of the authors: “I’m the Isar 2 in stretching operations!” There is also talk of policy competence, and Kriemhild and Siegfried merge in the heated dialogue into “Kriemkrieg” – wordplay and semantic skirmishes at the highest level, but what else could you expect from these sources?
The concept of minimal resources with maximum effects is proving extremely fruitful
The troupe’s play lives on what is shown no less than what is spoken. When you first look at the program, you still ask yourself: What do the “lighting concept” or “costume and stage design” need? As the game progresses and the protagonists morph into their roles, you realize just how fertile the concept of minimum resources, maximum effects is that these artists have cultivated over the years. Siegfried, Severin Groebner as a blond muddlehead and dandy in a golden shirt and with a red-white-red temper, is a brilliant achievement in the visualization of multiple and complex inwardness. The rotating backdrop palisade fence in all its simplicity is a solid backdrop for the fur-robed savages and massive contrast to the celestial fuss – but in a surprising twist reveals its castle-wellness innards for a royally impromptu slide.
Once again, in such situations one wishes to be able to distinguish between plan and improvisation. But it’s enough to imagine what it must have been like to write and rehearse the piece. This is how the constant fire on the vigilance and intellect of the audience occurs, in the spirit of the theater director in Goethe’s “Faust”: “So don’t spare me brochures and machines on this day, use the big and small heavenly light…”.
Thanks to various double roles, the production needs little staff for a broad panopticon of characters that are as divine as they are wild.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
Because the piece does not come along as spoken theater, but as “Germanical”, the incidental music plays a major role. On the one hand, this includes the clear and concise articulation of the various singing voices: even the best joke ends up empty if it remains inaudible. Here the ensemble delivers confidently and skilfully. It goes into the concert with the four-part band, which is dominantly placed in the middle of the stage and sets the tone and dramaturgically sets the pace and mood for long stretches. This is possible because the quartet “Altmann, Auer, Schimann und Liebethal” interwoven the composition of the incidental music directly with the opus and, like Wagner, balanced powerful passages, witty and silly, unlike Wagner, with the bizarre humor of the world of the gods Has.
Aron Altmann and Frank Schimann, together with Uli Jenne and Martin Stellmacher, not only energetically grab the strings, the keys and the drumsticks when they say “Hojotoho” in the sense of Metallica interpret. They also act as a choir in the sense of Greek tragedies, as spoilsports in the sense of internet spoilers and as supporting and leading roles when a few midgets or a Hagen are needed on stage again.
If the audience had ruled over thunder and lightning at the end of the two-hour intensive opus, the applause would probably have lifted the roof from the packed house. The comedy was divine, the excitement unearthly.