Gorky Theatre tramples on Nibelungen

Der Untergang der Nibelungen - The Beauty of Revenge at Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theatre on Wednesday 10 June, with its duration of 2.5 hours - without an intermission - did quite an assault on the sitting flesh. Admittedly, Wagner spared no expense for his version of the medieval Nibelungenlied four complete operas and director Peter Jackson devoted three full-length films to the epic also based on it Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, but they keep you nailed to your seat for the entire duration. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Sebastian Nübling's (what's in a name?) direction, in which boredom struck regularly; gradually more and more people snuck out of the auditorium.

It started nicely, with a black, dented Mercedes Benz prominently displayed on an otherwise empty stage shrouded in darkness. Suddenly, the lights come on and a number of unsavoury types get out of the car, their bodies jerking to the rhythm of a pumping beat - a heartbeat? a drone of war? They are Siegfried, King Gunther and his brothers Hagen, Gernot and Giselher. They are soon joined by Gunther's sister Kriemhilde and the Walküre Brunhilde - the latter portrayed in drag by Till Wonka, as a Jesus figure with very long hair, a shaggy beard and dressed only in minuscule leather shorts. Message: the Gorky Theatre is very welted!

The actors play an exciting, sexually tinged game, in which the mutual power relations keep changing. Similarly, three coloured people enter the stage, dressed in waitresses' and drivers' uniforms, who are childishly humiliated by Gunther. Message: the black fellow man is oppressed!

It all looks spectacular, but for those who have not thoroughly read the programme notes, it remains completely unclear what all these entanglements and characters have to do with the story and what exactly Nübling wants to tell us. The open-minded viewer is little helped in this regard by the actors' lightning-fast diction, which often makes their already woolly formulations unintelligible.

For a long time, it seems Der Untergang der Nibelungen mainly involve disturbed love and family relationships, with the Nibelungen treasure playing a secondary role. In a nutshell, Brunhilde demands the death of Siegfried, who subdued her disguised as Gunther and thus acquired Kriemhilde, after which Kriemhilde seeks revenge because her brothers murdered her beloved husband.

Brevity, however, is not Nübling's strong point. The performance meanders in all directions and the original story gets increasingly out of focus. It eventually degenerates into a pamphleteering morality tale about Germany's (Europe/the West's) supposed arrogance towards the rest of the world, the 'others'. Gathered in a clump in a kind of boxing ring, Gunther and his brother throw the innocent children of Hun King Etzel over the fence. A strong image, referring to the boat refugees we rücksichtslosely drown in the Mediterranean, but it is dragged in by the hair.

Hitler imitations and World Cup

Similarly, Gunther's brother Hagen's Hitler imitations are ludicrous, as is his long - English-language - monologue on the rivalry between the Netherlands and Germany. Although he gets the laughs with his reference to our country's defamation of the German Mansschaft lost World Cup in 1974, but then the relationship with the Treasure of the Nibelungen is very far off.

Hagen ends his argument with a repeated 'Wir sind noch wer' (we still count), which sounds increasingly hesitant. In itself a nice find, but it likewise does not organically spring from the action. Despite rave reviews, Nübling and the Gorki Theatre have failed to forge the medieval myth into a contemporary story. They have turned in Der Untergang der Nibelungen trampled on the medieval saga and smothered it in - well-meaning - testimonial drift.