Monday 19 December, 2005

Frankfurter Rundschau, 19.12.2005

Peter Michalzik waxes lyrical about Christoph Marthaler's "Fruchtfliege" (fruit fly), a "terribly beautiful" little play about the superfluousness of love in the time of artificial reproduction, which premiered last Friday at Volksbühne in Berlin. "Seven scientists in white lab coats whose utter non-contemporariness leaps out at you from the start, three women and four men who spend their days in a changing room that time has forgotten, human material left behind by the relentless pace of scientific progress, the by-product of a species bent on its own perfection. They awake only when they sing. And they sing the whole evening - 37 numbers from Verdi to Lloyd-Webber. These songs, which are mostly about love, are the play's real leading actors, creatures borne of bygone feelings. The 'fruit fly' is a long chain of sung inserts, or ironic islands of emotion, which Christoph Marthaler and the sensationally self-assured and multi-faceted pianist Stefan Wirth string together like pearls."


Andrea Breth's "Minna von Arnheim" in Vienna

After receiving general acclaim for her production of The Cherry Orchard (more here) this spring, stage director Andrea Breth has received mixed reviews for her new production of "Minna von Arnheim" at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The play, which many consider Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's greatest drama, deals with love and honour in the aftermath of war.

Writing in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Barbara Villiger Heilig is very taken by the production: "Despite its somewhat stilted 18th century language, the play goes straight to the heart, and audiences are in for three hours brimming with high tension, sharp wits, hard-bitten violence and broken-hearted tenderness. Thanks to Sven-Eric Bechtolf's Tellheim and Sabine Haupt's Minna, the play culminates in a grandiose and reciprocal near-miss."

Uwe Mattheiss in Die Tageszeitung is less complimentary: "Breth does nothing but bluntly confront two German ideologies - the Prussian and the pacifistic consensus of the former German Federal Republic - and as a result forfeits the analytic moment that normally sets her investigations into classical theatre apart. Breth is caught between wanting to bring out the antagonisms in the content and showing an affirmative harmony in the form. But her attempt to do justice to the text while creating self-contained characters results in a conflict that fails miserably. Even the time-honoured Burgtheater atmosphere cannot help things. Despite all the vituosity of the actors, Breth's production collapses on its own pre-suppositiions."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 19.12.2005

Markus Jakob diagnoses an ongoing "pact of forgetting" in Spain. For Jakob, the country is still unable to address the political murders and mass executions of the Franco era, or even call the crimes committed at the time by name. "Can it be that large parts of the Spanish population are even today beguiled by the simplifications of the Franquist ideology, and still live in the holy innocence and conformism that the regime assigned to its subjects? A job, an apartment, a family, and all for life... And of course a Spain – the Falange motto 'Espana, una, grande y libre' still fills many heads today. No wonder this country has brought forth the most abject masses of dull-headed conformists, and at the same time the most outlandish eccentrics imaginable. And sometimes both types are combined in one and the same person."


Saturday 17 December, 2005

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 17.12.2005

With an eye to the success of authors Arno Geiger, Daniel Kehlmann and Raoul Schrott, Paul Jandl announces the rebirth of Austrian prose. "The young Austrian writers are no longer calling for an 'End to the Occident!' (Schluss mit dem Abendland! - more here), as the avant-garde of forty years ago did. They lay no stress on genius, and are not at all angry or bad. The writers of today are affable, clever and around 30. Most already have a couple of novels under their belts. And they keep on writing away. The German feuilletons have almost nothing but praise for them, while their own literature seems to be stalled in the competition for the first great novel about the fall of the Berlin Wall."


Die Welt, 17.12.2005

"Deafeningly loud" is Sonja Margolina's description of the German government's silent reaction to a new Russian law aimed at preventing the work of foreign foundations and the 450,000 or so foreign-funded NGOs in Russia. But then again, she adds, "It's time to admit to ourselves that the furtherance of democracy has completely failed in Russia. The country is becoming ever more authoritarian, the human rights and environmental situation is deteriorating rapidly. NGO activities have absolutely no influence on political development in Russia."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 17.12.2005

Hannes Gamillscheg is pleased to hear that Denmark's intellectuals are finally protesting against their country's tightening of the laws on foreigners. But they've taken their sweet time about it. "When it was ruled that a person who wants to bring a foreign spouse to Denmark has to prove not only that they have work, accommodation and a bank guarantee, but also that the couple jointly have more ties to Denmark than to any other country – there was not a peep of protest. When it was made illegal for people under 24 to marry a foreigner – not a word. When welfare for immigrants was halved – nothing."