Musical theater: Florentina Holzinger: Naked pussy versus evil

First of all, the regional context: Mecklenburg was reformed almost half a millennium ago. The history of the Christian religion in the area is one of steady decline. While in the middle of the 19th century almost the entire population of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was Christian, today around 16 percent still profess the Christian faith. Three percent are Catholic. When it comes to declining audiences, the church is doing much worse than the struggling theaters.

Why is that important? In the state capital Schwerin, the performance artist Florentina Holzinger, herself from Austria, which has a very different religious background, invited people to a holy mass under different circumstances at the Mecklenburg State Theater. That means – with the usual set pieces of your theater evenings: a stark naked gang of women, some blood, some un-Christian self-castigation and some sex. It is not known whether the local audience has extensive knowledge of Catholic liturgy; but it may be doubted. It is not a spectacle for an audience in a specific region, but the international co-production will move on next month and apparently does not take such petites into account.

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Holzinger’s currently hyped, feminist-labeled dance performance theater has a clear recipe. She draws on the means of performance art and occasionally cites classical dance. The greatest strength of her work lies in the impressive scenic images that she is able to create. Apart from that, their full-length productions are not characterized by a wealth of ideas. There is something strangely revue-like and occasionally kitschy about them. One number follows the next. And so the evenings increase dramatically until the inevitable tiredness sets in.

The choreographer and director’s detour into musical theater could have been a way out of not becoming a victim of her own limited theater toolbox. But Holzinger relies too much on her resources. She chooses Paul Hindemith’s one-act opera “Sancta Susanna” and then continues with two and a half hours of the usual numbers, which she fits into the framework of a Christian ceremony – interpreted in a feminist way.

Hindemith’s composition, which lasted just 25 minutes, was a scandal when it premiered at the Frankfurt Opera almost a hundred years ago. The neo-objective orchestral music accompanies a scene borrowed as a libretto from the expressionist playwright August Stramm.

One night in the merry month of May, the nun Susanna, opposite a crucifix in a monastery church, suddenly feels an unknown carnal desire. A light goes out. The sisters suspect Satan. A sister, named Beata, had once already committed a sin here and, in her excitement, passed by the image of Christ, whereupon she fell dead, was walled up and the very candle of atonement was lit. Susanna is not deterred, celebrates her body and refuses to be converted to chastity.

The Schwerin orchestra performs the little-known music of Hindemith and Holzinger first stages two singers costumed as nuns. But “Sancta Susanna”, here shortened to the title “Sancta”, is nothing more than a springboard for her thoroughly practiced staging principle. Soon naked performers join in, satisfying each other manually in pairs. And so it takes its course, which challenges the effect but hardly has any scenic effect.

In the following, the music alternates between the sacred and the all too profane, between Bach and pop, Gounod and musical. Everything is staged: roller skating on the halfpipe, a church bell struck by human bodies, magic tricks, cannibalism in homeopathic doses, live confession on stage and masturbation choreography on clay penises.

But does the production have nothing to say beyond its show value? A tired criticism of the brotherhood of Catholicism and patriarchy is being made, which is not new, but above all has already been expressed at a much higher level. Otherwise, everyone here on stage is very at peace with their faith. People still rave about miracles here. Love held high. And boasted a bit with a rebellious gesture, as if the resistance that Hindemith had to contend with still existed in the 21st century.

Apart from the injuries that the performers willingly inflict on themselves on stage, captured on a live camera, the evening doesn’t hurt anyone and turns out to be a calculated scandal that doesn’t come as a shock.

Next performances in Schwerin: May 31st, June 1st and 2nd
www.mecklenburgisches-staatstheater.de
The production will also be shown at the Berliner Volksbühne, the Stuttgart State Opera and as part of the Vienna Festival Weeks.