Wiener Volkstheater: Viennese group: “You shit like that”

It’s not as if the authors of the Vienna group haven’t written any plays. H. C. Artmann published a 500-page volume with dramatic texts (“the journey to the island of nantucket”) in 1969, and the theater volume in the Gerhard Rühm work edition that was currently being produced is also voluminous. There is, for example, a minimalist “nature study”: “open the curtain. defloration. Close the curtain.« Of course, these pieces are almost never played, and the evening at the Vienna Volkstheater, which is based on texts by the Viennese group, does not feature these dramatic works either. The same applies to this house: it is better to muddle up and adapt texts than to perform pieces.

In the cosmos of the Viennese neo-avant-gardists, dialect poetry is just one of many fields and probably not the most important. In the public perception of the Viennese group, which included Artmann and Rühm as well as Konrad Bayer, Friedrich Achleitner and Oswald Wiener, it was initially in the foreground. Artmann’s band “med ana schwoazzn dintn” from 1958 is still the greatest success today, and “hosn rosn baa” (with texts by Achleitner, Artmann and Rühm) was intended to follow on from that.

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Decades later, it is again only this approach to the Viennese group that director Wolfgang Menardi chooses for his loosely structured revue “heit bin en ned munta woan”, which does not obey any compelling dramaturgy. Menardi speaks of having been impressed as a child by H. C. Artmann’s “Black Songs” interpreted by Helmut Qualtinger. A tourist from northern Germany who got lost in the Volkstheater would see all the clichés about Vienna that he had read about in his travel guide confirmed that evening: the macabre, the black humor, the longing for death. Certainly, the poems, especially those by Artmann and Rühm, provide great inspiration here. Unlike these texts – perhaps with the exception of the occasional Artmann poem – Menardi wallows in the clichés instead of deconstructing them. One could also say: He takes the sting away from them.

In front of the curtain, Claudia Sabitzer chats about her role as “Pompfüneberer” (undertaker). The text is based on a documentary film that Árpád Bondy and Margit Knapp made about the Vienna Central Cemetery. The opened curtain reveals a view of the municipal housing apartment of Ms. Q., with Samouil Stoyanov also cast as a crossdresser. The apartment is decorated with stuffed birds; Ms. Q. in her conservative outfit seems to have stepped out of a Werner Schwab piece; A combo consisting of Ingrid Eder, Flora Geißelbrecht and Sixtus Preiss also wears the uniform of the suburban bourgeois.

As if strung together on a string of pearls, texts by Artmann, Rühm & Co. follow in a somewhat arbitrary order – sometimes declaimed, sometimes via telephone, sometimes quite attractively musically arranged by Matteo Haitzmann – and slapstick interludes. Every time the phone rings, Ms. Q. twitches; The attempt to position the television in front of the toilet and align the antenna correctly also turns into a clown act. Then she lies around again as a corpse, swears through the window into the courtyard or fills the scene with the cheesy “Ave Maria” by Gounod/Bach. Matteo Haitzmann, as a blond, curly-haired youth, also has to serve as an erotic projection surface for Q. – and at the end, as an adorable naked corpse, he also has to dance with her.

The spectrum of texts ranges from sentimental – when Artmann writes about forget-me-nots that grow out of the fingers of those who are longing – to brutal in Rühm: “ge scheissn/ du oasch/ du beidi schleich di/ sunsd brunz ia seidi/ in dei goschn/ and shit there de doschn/ voe«; The reductionism of the Upper Austrian Achleitner stands out somewhat (“so/so/a/m/hm/hm/hm”). All of this is brought to the stage with virtuosity and is applauded by the audience – only Menardi could have just as easily taken Viennese songs or Austropop: the enthusiastic premiere audience who celebrated their favorites probably wouldn’t have cared.

Finally, reality invades the slapstick revue – or does it? The attendees I spoke with after the premiere disagreed as to whether the medical emergency that interrupted the performance was real or part of the production. Suddenly the lights in the auditorium came on, paramedics came into action, the commercial director took the microphone and explained the situation. The fact that he also asked the audience whether a doctor was present could make one skeptical. Are there no theater doctors anymore? If it was a coincidence, he seemed as if he had been ordered. Gerhard Rühm, the last survivor of the Viennese group, who was present in the audience, was convinced that it was a production. Incidentally, he is not stuck in the 50s, but is as keen to experiment as ever – younger than his dramatists.

In their best dialect texts, the authors of the Viennese group have managed to exaggerate and exaggerate the clichés associated with their city and ultimately to eliminate them. This evening at the theater forces their texts back into a darkly humorous, feel-good atmosphere. The “strong alienation agent” as Rühm understands the macabre in dialect poetry does not come into its own. Vienna is once again celebrating itself, but the Viennese group is only very suitable for folklore to a limited extent.

Next performances: March 16th, 24th and 31st.

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