Lausitz Festival: Oh boy | nd-aktuell.de

The audience winds its way past lattice fences and stacked sandbags through a “war zone” in Cyprus. The battle it will witness is not at the front, but between the wounded masculinity of the generals. Because Othello chooses Cassio and not Iago as his deputy, the latter begins to forge an intrigue out of hurt pride. It’s easy for him because the resentment against the glorious but black Othello is already simmering beneath the surface. The opulent start of the Laustiz Festival, which is played on simultaneous stages in a former glass factory in Weißwasser, upholds art as an encounter with the “other self” – as the festival slogan goes.

The philosopher Christoph Menke praises the encounter with the completely different in his opening speech, as it is able to break through the usual for a moment and free thinking. In Marcel Kohler’s production, however, it is hatred and mistrust that contact with the stranger triggers and which are particularly directed against the marriage vows between Othello and the white Venetian woman Desdemona.

Divided into three groups, the audience observes how the conflict spreads spatially into the homes and lives of women in particular, without following the chronology of the tragedy. The genius of the production lies in the simultaneous play. While we watch Desdemona’s angry mother, who, in a state of dolce vita, learns of her daughter’s unwanted engagement, or Emilia, Iago’s wife, who asserts her autonomy from her husband’s actions and the desires of others by dancing, the sounds mix together Adjoining room.

John Lennon’s “I’m just a jealous guy”, which can be heard from various corners of the hall, aptly accompanies the evening. Because Iago, whom Götz Schubert plays as an engaging demagogue against whom the other characters can do little, succeeds in appealing to Othello’s jealousy. When he finally runs after the screaming Desdemona, played by Linn Reusse, with a knife in order to destroy her for a supposed affair, he becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and corresponds to the image of the murdering stranger.

The production is interested in the racist potential that can be awakened in Mother Brabantia and the choir with a few well-chosen words, and that drives Othello, played by actor Leonard Burkhardt, to his actions. However, in the trial of femicide, images are repeated that the right-wingers are particularly happy about: the white woman as a screaming victim. Instead of resolving this image and showing Iago and Othello meeting in their misogynistic hatred, the screams of Desdemona running away seem haunting and emotional. The feelings that the scene produces in the narrow bedroom close to the audience are those that right-wing groups exploit for their xenophobic agitation.

In the final scene, the fascist overwhelming aesthetic is further intensified. Between the audience standing together, the citizens’ choir begins to chant in the large industrial hall, then Jago steps up to a high railing and speaks to the people. In a populist tone, the schemer recites an excerpt from “The Strangers” by Shakespeare, a plea for compassionate treatment of refugees. The contradictory content does not manage to break the fascist-like production, which is booming with music and voices.

The theater evening is convincing not because of its monumentality, but rather in its small form, when right at the beginning a sensitive Othello plays a violin solo that is too long or Dagna Litzenberger Vinet as the headstrong Emilia starts to speak Heiner Müller’s “Hamlet machine” and with the words “Oh, never mind « breaks off. In these moments, the ensemble and direction prove themselves to be imaginative players.

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