Werner Schwab

“I hate the audience. The audience is the death of the theatre.” So says the overweight poet in the play. He could just as well have said “The poet is the death of the theatre,” “The set designer is the death of the theatre,” or “The director is the death of the theatre.” Or even: “The theatre is the death of the theatre.” In Werner Schwab’s last play, all theatre makers get their just desserts. It is a veritable reckoning, so strongly evaluated in typically cutting Schwabian style that one is almost inclined to accept the hyperbole as a real depiction of a self-destructive modern theatre. The figures are apt for the reckoning: the poet Mühlstein, who feels himself misunderstood, hangs around the neck of the theatre; the director Saftmann tries to lend the play more substance with his philosophy of death and enacts the topic; the set designer Rubens indulges in his own pictures. The cleaning lady, Frau Haider, is as unpleasant as her namesake and is a poor voice of the people. The rehearsals are a catastrophe. After an equally disastrous visit by the Minister of Family Affairs, the actors leave the theatre. Reality is setting in: Saftmann recruits residents of an old people’s home to enable the play within a play to continue. Frau Haider, meanwhile, stages an insurrection and takes power. The old people, weeded out of society, rise up against the theatre and against its executor: they kill Saftmann. And breathe out.