Sex & Gender: Arthur Schnitzler’s “Reigen” in Salzburg
The Viennese sense of the world during Arthur Schnitzler’s lifetime may not have been dissimilar to ours. The age of decadence was an epoch in the mood for doom, characterized by a similar awareness of crisis as the present. At the time, the feeling of losing control also fed Freudian psychoanalysis, which did away with the human illusion of being the master of one’s own ego. Today, gender identities and relationships are being renegotiated, which for quite a few people – despite the progress that the development means for many – is also accompanied by considerable uncertainty. A contemporary update to heavenly for the scandalous piece of yore is also a probably plausible idea.
Schnitzler’s series of erotic encounters winds its way up through ten scenes through all social classes, from the prostitute to the count, only to return to its starting point at the end. Men and women always meet each other. The Salzburg Reigen adaptation, on the other hand, deals with all varieties of human mating behavior, heterosexual as well as homosexual. It’s about coming-outs and nervous breakdowns, infidelities and everyday married life, as well as self-discovery and self-loss. The authorship of this evening of theater is as diverse as the themes that are touched upon in ten mini-dramas. Each of the ten scenes of Schnitzler’s original served as a stepping stone to the present for a different playwright.
Young authors take “Reigen” one step further
Where in Schnitzler, for example, a young gentleman BECOMES intrusive towards a domestic worker, in Leila Slimani’s MeToo drama, a director is on trial for allegations of rape by an au pair girl. Hengameh Yaghoobifarah turns the poet who takes advantage of a young girl’s naivety into an aging best-selling writer. And Sharon Dodua Otoo has a woman run emotionally amok against the role of mother she’s trapped in.
In Yana Ross’s production, champagne glasses and plates are usually swept off the tables at such moments, so that everyone in the audience really realizes that emotional states of emergency are now prevailing. The director sets almost all of the scenes (with the exception of a few, which are shown as pre-produced videos) in a posh restaurant. Perhaps a metaphor for our time, which offers a wealth of life plans à la carte, so to speak, only that the selection overwhelms some, yet does not offer something suitable for everyone, and if it does, then often at too high a price. Somehow Ross has to clamp the scenic potpourri together. Because the individual stations of this new dance are not only extremely heterogeneous in terms of quality, but also comprehensive and formal. From court drama to relationship cabaret, there is quite a bit, linguistically the spectrum ranges from affected artificial language to everyday jargon.
Art speech and emotional amok
In terms of staging, elegiac kitsch in noble furnishings and quaint artistic effort alternate. One is really grateful for a bit boring dialogue theater in between. There are also actresses like Lena Schwarz and Sibylle Canonica, who cultivate their mannerisms – which has the advantage that the laconic understatement of ensemble colleagues like Matthias Neukirch or Yodit Tarikwa has an all-round more beneficial effect. Nevertheless: this round dance does not run smoothly. It was probably intended to bring the centrifugal forces of our time into focus, but it itself disintegrates into its sometimes more, mostly less usable individual parts.