Josefstadt premiere

Instead of “Uncle Vanya”, it’s Lainz on ecstasy

Thomas Frank (Telegin), Raphael von Bargen (Vanya), Alexander Absenger (Astrov)(Bild: Theater in der Josefstadt/Rita Newman)

Premiere for "Uncle Vanya": Anton Chekhov's lost souls on the desolate country estate have to engage in brainless riotous mischief at the Theater in der Josefstadt.

It is touching how the shadow of the two-century actor Gert Voss, who died ten years ago, still falls over the repertoire. The successful Burgtheater "Lear" has just had to compete with Luc Bondy's giant play. Now people remember Voss' last role in Matthias Hartmann's "Uncle Vanya". In fact, Voss also called the success of a Chekhov performance every actor's dream: to make the deadly boredom of the dying landowner class float minutes before the Russian Revolution is the supreme task.

Certainly no one has dreamed of what Josefstadt is now showing: director Amelie Niermeyer puts the German Klamaukspritze into operation, the result is a devastatingly flat, brainless Chekhov in a fifties wasteland with pop music, more committed to thickening than to the flow of thought. The old lady Josefstadt plays Lainz on ecstasy.

The furiously overheated scene in which Vanya goes crazy with Raphael von Bargen would be the highlight of the evening if it weren't for the constant rioting beforehand; Johanna Mahaffy shows what depth of heart she is capable of in the microscopic moments of silence; Joseph Lorenz, Nicole Ansari, Thomas Frank, Marianne Nentwich and Alexander Absenger are extraordinarily appealing. But provincial mediocrity can't come across so loudly that it doesn't slip into boredom. Unfortunately not the magical one that Chekhov intended.