Ostermaier’s “Munich Machine” premieres | FAZ | EUROtoday

A utopia in reminiscence of Klaus Lemke,” is the subtitle of Albert Ostermaier’s new piece “Munich Machine.” The title quotes DJ Hell’s album of the identical identify from 1998. The piece stretches the final minute within the lifetime of the anarchic movie director, who died in 2025, right into a dying minute of greater than three hours, together with a break. There is a movie wherein Ostermaier captures lots of the horrors of the historical past of the town of Munich within the twentieth century, which isn’t with out its share of horrors – from the Soviet Republic to National Socialism, Lenin, Hitler, Ludwig Thoma, the Schelling Salon, Franz Josef Strauss, the 1972 Olympic Games overshadowed by the assassination try, the RAF, the Hoffmann navy sports activities group, the Oktoberfest assault, baby abuse within the Catholic Church. The entire factor is within the model of a metropolis insult à la Thomas Bernhard, extending from Dachau to Altötting because the “Heart of Darkness”.

Through this non-chronological pandemonium, Brigitte Hobmeier as Klaus Lemke leads a customer named AI (Cathrin Störmer) from the male-free planet Gynäa, who has landed in entrance of the State Chancellery together with her white sausage UFO and desires to know what Munich, the previous capital of the utopia motion, presents as a research object as regards to “irrational projects”. Lemke is accompanied by Amore (Thomas Hauser), a reference to Cleo Kretschmer, who grew to become recognized in Lemke’s 1978 movie “Amore”. AI has a bald head, a spacey spiked costume, jerky actions and a neat speech obstacle: she stutters and says, for instance, “sug-sug-suggests”.

Even earlier than she begins her utopia analysis, the Munich baby because the Grim Reaper had demanded in an offended lyrical monologue that Munich should “become danceable again”. Others had fully completely different concepts, similar to Hitler, who negotiated with Brecht within the urinal of the Schelling Salon whether or not he might train him to sit down accurately. And the butcher’s son from Schellingstrasse, Franz Josef Strauss, analyzes Bavarian-style Catholicism as “true communism” in a beer tent speech, presents his occasion as “Communist Socialists United” and raves about his objective of “uniting Bavaria with the GDR.”

Bavaria, Strauß fumes, is threatened by “Nordkopferten”, “soon full of Düsseldorfers and Berliners in Lederhosen”. There is a menace of main inhabitants change. An outdated topos within the historical past of Bavarian mentality, really ridden to demise way back. But Ostermaier and his director Ersan Mondtag share a destiny: the person from Munich, who was born in 1967, and the person from Berlin, who’s twenty years his junior, are deeply connected to their hometown. Mondtag beforehand confided within the “Abendzeitung” that he thought-about Munich to be a “zombie city” that not had any potential and had “basically been told to the end.” And he advised the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” that if he needed to reside in Munich, he would in all probability kill himself. Whatever they are saying.

The director has a determined must arrange Ostermaier’s quarry for the stage, to acknowledge it as a theatrical sculpture. Mondtag decides on a grotesque revue, extra movie than theater. Together with Lorenz Stöger he additionally designed the stage and costumes and created a movie set – Lemke, director, cinema! – with home facades, staircases and a cigarette machine positioned on the revolving stage. Luis August Krawen reveals the actors’ mouths vast speak in confidence to the roof of their mouths on video.

Ersan Mondtag is utilizing his debut on the Bavarian State Theater to actually make a big effect. Nine actors in 27 roles, males play ladies and vice versa, Pia Handel, Isabell Antonia Höckel, Myriam Schröder, Vincent Glander, Max Mayer and Niklas Mitteregger are at full capability, plus a choir and music composed by Benedikt Brachtel and DJ Hell. Gerrit Jurda’s lighting route largely immerses the stage in black, violet or inexperienced fog, solely within the disco scene within the grocery store, wherein Freddie Mercury and Rudi meet the singer Donna Summer whereas procuring and ask for her blessing for his or her wedding ceremony, do the cones of sunshine shine from the stage sky. The disco queen, whose profession took off in Munich, rudely denies this: “God created Adam and Eve. Not Adam and Steve.”

That was Munich too, everybody was excited to be in Munich again then. And then? “The Obermeier Uschi,” says Amore. “The only thing left from the revolution was a sex bomb.” The play repeatedly returns to baby abuse by Catholic clergymen; these are the bitterest, most painful scenes of real-life scandals. This is not a “historical spectacle,” AI acknowledges, “this is a case study in systemic cover-ups and the rhetoric of power.” Here Ostermaier as soon as once more attracts on his experiences throughout his time at a monastery college; Most just lately, within the Pasolini novel “Love Continues,” which was revealed final 12 months, there have been passages that may be learn as experiences of abuse.

And the place is the constructive? Bavaria not less than remembers a couple of parts that after outlined Munich: the sunshine, the hairdryer, Leopoldstrasse, the flickering of the Isar, the Nackerten within the English Garden. “Who wants to see the ugly Berliners naked!” asks the mom of the nation earlier than she is shot. And after all Helmut Dietl should not be lacking. Analogous to General Director Haffenloher in “Kir Royal,” Hitler threatens Brecht to offer him cash. And Dietl’s “Munich Stories” are honored on the finish of the carnival episode, wherein the Lehel cowboys experience to Sacramento. “It was never that nice.”

Why, nonetheless, a synthetic German with sprinklings of English is generally spoken that’s far faraway from Munich’s language stays a thriller because the route stretches out some scenes excessively. The outcomes of the utopia leitmotif additionally stay manageable: even when it’s not an efficient means, it doesn’t appear to work with out it. A disillusioning conclusion after Ostermaier uncovered so lots of the sinners that make up Munich.

Towards the tip there are appeals to togetherness, to the cohesion of a society, which is maybe not so pronounced in Munich, which is at all times self-sufficient. Bavaria, that was as soon as America, and in the present day? “Cozy fascism” and hatred. “Why have we become so strangers to ourselves during the pandemic? All that was left of us was anger,” complains Klaus. As if one thing have been lacking, the penultimate scene offers with the migration situation, terminally unwell visitor staff towards capitalists, a bitter conclusion is assured: “With us you are people, without us you are just Germans.”

Then AI cries the primary tear of her life and disappears into the vastness of area, and Klaus dies. He does this quietly and significantly within the face of an eternity that is aware of nothing about Leopoldstrasse, Eisbachwelle and Oktoberfest. Hobmeier performs this nuanced and delicately. It’s accomplished at 10:45 p.m. Sometimes demise is a reduction, not less than within the theater.