Alexander Widner

Widner’s shimmering experimentation with comedy, irony and earnestness characterises the wonderfully anecdotal style of the dialogue in Dichter, Flucht und Alma, a “mountain play” that commemorates Alma Mahler, Franz Werfel, and Golo, Heinrich and Nelly Mann’s escape from the Nazis. Precisely in the excess of high tragic parody can be found questions of social determination and individual responsibility. In its world premiere, the picturesque hike of 1940 became “a triumph for the Burgfestspiele Reichenau and for Widner’s text.” (Kleine Zeitung)