Austrian impresario Paulus Manker celebrates Wagner's bicentenary by asking in “Wagner’s Twilight”: is a genius allowed to be a scoundrel ?

VIENNA - Paulus Manker, enfant terrible of the Austrian theatre scene, stands outside the old central post and telegraph building in Vienna’s inner city and welcomes the guests as only he knows how. Before I even get my tickets, he has coarsely insulted my family. Should I boycott him or treat his behaviour as part of the performance? I choose the latter. And now for the “Wagnerdämmerung” – “Wagner’s Twilight” - as Manker calls his spectacle in memory of the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth.

A mix of Wagner leitmotifs echoes through the inner courtyard of the former imperial communications headquarters. A chorus of actors voice Wagner quotes while dancers in black overalls curl themselves around the balcony railings An actor with a Slav accent declaims an anti-semitic text of Wagner's. I sip a glass of prosecco in anticipation. Will some of the Austrian spectators involuntarily nod in agreement ? Because it is a Wagner evening and because the tickets cost 125 Euros, the audience looks conservative. But all pass Manker’s test: nobody applauds. The prologue is over and we troop expectantly down the main staircase deep into the cellars below.

There in the darkness, actors are hanging off walls, slumped over beams and dangling from poles as if they were dead. The poetic, absurd carcass of the old post and telegraph office and its rotting machinery provides a fitting and visually rich backdrop. The audience moves almost devoutly through the cold, dank underground chambers at random. Everyone waits for the actors to move and when the human installations finally do, hope appears on the spectators' faces. Will this be a revival of Manker’s biggest success, the polydrama “Alma”? Back in 1996, he managed to have multiple Almas playing the life of composer Alma Mahler-Werfel. She was simultaneously the muse and wife of composer Gustav Mahler, writer Franz Werfel and architect Walter Gropius – and Manker constantly kept the audience on their toes, trying not to miss the action as it moved around.

But “Wagner’s Twilight” remains anchored in its fixed tableaux, more installations than theatre. Only rarely does a set piece develop dramatic tension. Most feel like disconnected monologues, with no sense of thematic development - ironic, given their subject's fascination with narrative. In Manker's hands, central themes from Wagner operas become grotesque caricatures: siblings in love, warring giants, and a wild, screaming Siegfried, who wants to hit everything and everyone in his way. An actor wanders around playing a Jew who conducts philosophical exchanges with various figures. Wager's alter ego -- or Manker's ?

Only Winifried Wagner’s monologues are clearly defined dramatically. As the composer's English-born daughter-in-law and a great friend of Adolf Hitler, her character alone stands out from the swirling Valkyries in the Viennese catacombs. Joshua Sobol, the Israeli playwright and author of Manker’s productions “Alma” and “Weininger’s Night”, seems to have had less influence on this one.

As it progresses, the performance sheds less light on Wagner’s controversial life and work than on Manker’s own sexual fantasies. Wagner’s bombastic music is punctuated by the cries of tortured women echoing through the vault. By the end of the performance, the young and beautiful actresses are mostly naked and covered in blood. Siegfried still roams the corridors, screaming and seemingly willing to hit everything in his way. By the time we are all brought together for the final funeral scene, most guests, hungry and tormented by two hours of noise, darkness and fumes, walk through Manker’s giant torture chamber like zombies.

But Manker springs a final surprise in compensation. Via a small, metal circular staircase he leads the audience out of the cellars up into a park. There, in front of the building, a black horse-drawn funeral carriage appears to collect Wagner’s coffin, borne down the building's stately steps by mourners. By torch- and candlelight, Vienna looks 150 years younger. Spectators and bypassers stand silently in front of this most poetic setting in the imperial city. Foam rubber pieces poke out of the building's windows and sprout from its facade – references to the excellent contemporary art exhibition “See Wagner” which is part of the Wagner bicentenary special. Then Manker sends his guests back down to the catacombs for a lavish wake.

That’s when it gets really interesting. Two renowned music experts sit down with us for the banquet which is included in the performance. They had caught my eye when walking around earlier because they seemed anchored in Wagner’s world. Susana Zapke teaches history of music at  the new Viennese "Konservatorium", and her husband Christian Meyer runs the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna. Both are experts on Wagner's influence on the composers that followed him. Their twins' names ? Tristan and Isolde.

Most people around us eat hastily to escape from the morbid, oxygen-starved vault choked with torch smoke. But we stay, drink and contemplate whether Wagner is socially acceptable. For the parents of Tristan and Isolde, the answer is clear -  intellectual musicians appreciate the intense and extensive power of expression in Wagner’s operas – pathos included. For me, it is different. At home we never listened to Wagner's music. He was considered overblown and his racism repulsive. The counter-argument is that perhaps anti-semitism was normal at the time and not in itself sufficient reason to shun his operas. Daniel Barenboim may be right to campaign against a de facto Wagner ban in Israel. If Wagner were alive today, he would probably not indulge in anti-semitic rants. But Wagner will never be my favourite composer.

Meanwhile they turn up his music to move us out. When this fails, they switch to a techno beat to guarantee eviction. We find all of this hilarious and I am almost reconciled with Manker’s take on Wagner.

But it’s not a masterpiece. “Does a genius have the right to be a scoundrel?” the actors chant in the final funeral scene, standing around Wagner’s coffin. They refer to the composer, but maybe Manker is also trying to create some room for manoeuvre for himself in the city. Because of his insufferable behaviour, an example of which I glimpsed at the beginning of the evening, city officials have cut off financial support for his productions. Let’s put it like this: it would probably help if the scoundrel were a genius.

Apropos Wagner:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/02/bayreuth-merkel-westminster-philistinism-leninists