Stefan Bachmann is staging an adaptation of Feuchtwanger’s “Erfolg” at the Munich Residenztheater. A revue of horror, nightmarish, spooky – and very entertaining.
This evening of theater is stonewalling, literally. The whole stage is built up with a wall of grey-black cubes, like a bulwark against everything that might come from outside. Then a slit opens up, wider and wider, until the whole ensemble becomes visible in the open window box. Ten figures huddled together, palely made-up faces, all but one in black, all fearful and to be feared. It is a crowd and a crowd from which they chant the first movements in chorus. A worldwide politicization of the judiciary in the years after the First World War is advertised, from which they come to “their” case without further ado and in roles that are now emerging: the case of Martin Krüger, “in Germany, in the state of Bavaria”, as does Lion Feuchtwanger told it in all its ramifications in his novel “Erfolg” published in 1930.