“Baroque” is an evening of theater dedicated to diversity and tolerance, an evening against the tyranny of the body mass index: four heavyweight young women, amateurs, are on stage in the Bochum theater and are twinned with five professionals from the ensemble for a show, who asks about how it feels to have to endure constant disparaging looks. But that is “by no means” all. The evening is dedicated to the Baroque, an era that we appreciate and love. Bach, Handel, Purcell, Vivaldi – their music, often so triumphant, still delights people centuries later. But the baroque also has an opposite side that is rather neglected, which has to do with melancholy and the admonition: “Vanitas vanitatum” – everything is vain.
The Belgian director and performance artist Lies Pauwels knows the ropes from one to the other. She proved her range a few years ago in Bochum with the amazingly effective “Hamilton Complex”, an evening with female teenagers. The young people obviously feel safe under the care of this fun-loving artist, they show sides of themselves that they would rather hide under other circumstances. The “Hamilton complex” was about the hardships of puberty, and when the girls let their long hair fly with relish, it was “pick-up” and a playful declaration of war at the same time. This is also the case in “Baroque”, the speech duet of two powerfully voiced heavyweights who shout their anger at you at the ramp at common defamation.
The music is also opulent, like everything else on this lush evening
But Lies Pauwels is too much of a shrewd theater maker to content herself with agitation and propaganda. Also in “Baroque” she pulls out all available registers to overwhelm the audience rather than just serving them discreetly. The music, already opulent and suggestive by nature, is played at full volume and, if possible, increased. And the aesthetic spectrum between Handel and Caravaggio, between spiritual fervor and narrative sophistication, is played out and exploited in all its sharpness. There is always this dichotomy between the tasty, the seductive and the abyss of the demonic. In the baroque, the devil is very topical. The replica of a baroque marble sculpture (stage and costumes: Johanna Trudzinski) shows unmistakably: This Apollo wants to rape the nymph Daphne, she will have to transform herself into a laurel tree to escape.
Typically baroque: the tasty, the seductive and the demonic on a marble stage.
(Photo: Fred Debrock)
A certain ostentation is not alien to the evening, but it fits the theme; when the four “full-figured” amateur players present their bodies self-confidently, the opulence, the “fat-friendliness”, as the program says, is a gesture of the magnificent. The term is ubiquitous, representing just one of countless synonyms for the crude, banal word “thick.” The five pros don’t miss out on all of this. When Ann Göbel hypocritically asks her lay partner whether she should call a doctor, when Jing Xiang bangs her mouth until it bleeds and performs a horrifying “Blood Litany” from Dracula to Tarantino, or when William Cooper emotionally sings “Blue Velvet” – then these are precious little interludes in an evening that forms a clear humane message without neglecting contradictions.
The diversity of the Bochum ensemble has often been recognized. There is trouble here too. Before the contract extension of the director Johan Simons (until 2026) an anonymous letter caused a stir, which allegedly came from the middle of the ensemble and polemicized violently against this very extension. Simons makes theater “for the arts pages,” it said, and he was “never there.” Dissatisfied people like there are in every theater? Or is there more to it? The “Baroque” premiere was not sold out. Normally, the pandemic is currently blamed for this.