2023-09-10 07:55:13
The time is not yet ripe
September 10, 2023. So now? The last season has begun for the directors Nicolas Stemann and Benjamin von Blomberg at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. One accusation against them: they alienated the audience with too much artistic experimentalism. This can hardly apply to this version of Brecht’s “Life of Galileo”.
By Valeria Heintges
September 10, 2023. You rub your eyes in amazement. Aren’t we at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, whose directors also have to take their hats off because they alienated their regular audience with productions that were too modern and too free and so they simply stayed away? But there is no doubt about it: we are at Peacock, Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo” is being shown. Directed by Nicolas Stemann, one of the directors alongside Benjamin von Blomberg, who are now ushering in their “Final Season”, as all the posters announce.
A bit of utopian color
But what’s on stage is not at all overly modern and certainly not overly free. Rather, it is a very word- and dialogue-heavy work; seven actors in almost completely black costumes, their white shoes the exception that confirm the rule – they only treat themselves to a bit of utopian color every now and then. No foreign text, no escape from roles. You can even sign – with a little bit of blind eye – “Music by Hanns Eisler”, but musician Andrina Bollinger gives the thing a very unique tone with her version for guitar and piano and her voice.
But of course the work is by Nicolas Stemann. Anyone who knows his version of Dürrenmatt’s Visit of the Old Lady and Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrann will also see the connection: While in the two works multi-person pieces were reduced to two players, the many people are now transferred to a strong seven-person ensemble that can move freely tosses the games in a floating manner. Essentially, Matthias Neukirch is the opportunistic Galileo and Steven Sowah is the combative, courageous Galileo. Alicia Aumüller plays the somewhat emancipated daughter Virginia and Maximilian Reichert plays the student Andrea – they are both firmly on Galileo’s side. But then it gets more complicated: Gottfried Breitfuss is usually Galileo’s housekeeper, Mrs. Sarti, but sometimes he is also on the side of the church’s opponents with Sebastian Rudolph and Karin Pfammatter. And in the end, when everything becomes more and more blurred between the good and the bad, the clever and the stupid, then they have all been Galileo seven times.
A strong, seven-member ensemble: Andrea Bollinger, Gottfried Breitfuss, Steven Sowah, Matthias Neukirch, Maximilian Reichert, Alicia Aumüller, Sebastian Rudolph, Karin Pfammatter © Philip Frowein
But otherwise? The Schauspielhaus Zurich has certainly delivered its most conservative production in a long time. With few props, a very clear, almost flat stage design by Jelena Nagorni, in which the floor plates move and hang like fragments of bowls hanging to the sky when the old Ptolemaic bowl model is smashed on stage. With a big celebration for the friends of the word, for the fans of cultivated entertainment and the champions of good arguments. The latter in particular get their money’s worth with Brecht. Finally, it’s about the astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei, who – Giordano Bruno was just burned for the same claim – can prove with the help of the newly invented telescope that it is not the sun that revolves around the earth, but the earth around the sun. So that the Ptolemaic worldview may agree with the Bible’s opinion, but unfortunately not with reality. In the course of the play, Galileo realizes that the time is not yet ripe for his discovery or that the power of the church is still too strong.
The choice for the good life and food
And so he ends up first in prison, then in eight years of silence. Finally, faced with the instruments of torture, he decides for the good life and good food. And revoked. But he manages to get past his guards, finish writing his main work and smuggle it out of the country. “Life of Galileo” premiered in a first version exactly 80 years ago to the day, on September 9, 1943, at the same location in Zurich. Under the impact of the atomic bomb, Brecht wrote a second version in English, which premiered in exile in Los Angeles in 1947, and a third, which was performed at the Berliner Ensemble in 1956, after Brecht’s death.
Between bringer of salvation and damnation
Nicolas Stemann uses this last version, in which science is more strongly in tension between bringing salvation and damnation, the scientist is torn by doubts about and belief in progress. Because it’s all there in the work: the scientist’s struggle against the stupidity of those around him, but also his fight for progress at all costs and his lack of scruples in the face of deadly and destructive research. Likewise, the tendency of those in power to promote the scientists who benefit them and to hinder and destroy those whose results do not suit them. The struggle of the individual for his place in the universe and in society. Brecht already added the scenes about the plague, they fit post-Corona very well; The destructive consequences of “progress” were already there; dramaturg Moritz Frischkorn added the words “climate change” and “destruction of the planet”. And yes: you can of course also read the work in such a way that it is not just Galileo who is fighting for the obvious. Because anyone who would look closely would notice: Zurich society has long been diverse…
The struggle of the individual in society: Maximilian Reichert, Gottfried Breitfuss, Alicia Aumüller, Karin Pfammatter, Steven Sowah, Matthias Neukirch © Philip Frowein
If your thoughts are so inspired while listening and watching because of the good acting performances, you can appreciate that, even if the aesthetics come across as a bit boring. But it’s a bit boring.
Life of Galileo
by Bertolt Brecht
Production: Nicolas Stemann, music: Hanns Eisler, live music: Andrina Bollinger, set design: Jelena Nagorni, costume design: Ellen Hofmann, video: Johanna Bajohr, lighting: Christoph Kunz, dramaturgy: Moritz Frischkorn.
With: Alicia Aumüller, Gottfried Breitfuss, Matthias Neukirch, Karin Pfammatter, Maximilian Reichert, Sebastian Rudolph, Steven Sowah.
Premiere am 9. September 2023
Duration: 3 hours, one break
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