Castle premiere

“Central Cemetery”: Martin Kusej’s last meter

Alongside Heldenplatz, the Central Cemetery is another place that gives Vienna its identity. Herbert Fritsch has dedicated his new production at the Burgtheater to this place, which was staged as the final premiere of Martin Kušej's directorship. 

This was the end of the long lap of honor, at the climax of which the reluctantly departing Burg director Kušej moved to his new post in Shanghai. After revealing himself as a "misanthrope" and crucified saviour ("Orpheus Descends") with his own farewell productions, he experiments with forms of nonsense for the finale: first with an embarrassing nonsense administration in the form of a Nazi performance. Towards the halfway harmless end, however, with the virtuoso nonsense that the Bavarian directorial anarchist Herbert Fritsch has in his little finger.

The evening is called "Zentralfriedhof" (and that is not a reference to the 63.8% occupancy rate). The cliché of the death-obsessed Viennese is thrown up in the air: eleven pompous fiddlers who spend 90 minutes on an almost empty stage with wordless, highly acrobatic, Dadaist slapstick. What they do with suspenders, bicycles and shovels is fascinating at first, but then wears out in futility. Also because no one can keep up this pace for an entire evening. But the zombie scene works, and each of the eleven castle actors deserves a place in the grove of theater art.