“Twilight of the Gods”: This is how the Wiener Festwochen advertises its (not really Wagnerian-programmed) final happening on Sunday on the Badeschiff. A nice but nice insult to a festival that this year revealed itself to be “Republic Of Gods”.
It was also fitting to perform “Parsifal,” the stage festival play that boldly appropriates Christian forms. Even Susanne Kennedy’s idea of staging it as an esoteric virtual reality flea market would have fit into the theme, but unfortunately the arranged trinkets in the production taken from Ghent seemed too sloppy.
In any case, the topic of religion was well chosen. It’s in the room. Probably also in the form of the ongoing esoteric trend that is notoriously enchanting for artists. But above all in the form of Islam, with which our Western culture must learn to live, and Islamism, with which it cannot learn to live without giving up. To use a common image: the festival program paid little attention to this elephant in the room.
Nor the themed symposium – which was so provocatively and cleverly programmed in the first two years of Milo Rau’s directorship. This year, under the title “The Faith Tribunal”, the oppression in Iran was described, but not the theocracy ideology of Islam, but that of Christianity was analyzed. Anyone who likes it rough can call it cowardly.
The somewhat courageous invitation of – back in Christian territory! – theologically dilettante entrepreneur Peter Thiel failed because of the delusion, which was rampant in some left-wing sociotopes (apparently also in the Vienna City Hall), that people who thought differently were not allowed to have their say and had to be denied the stage. Milo Rauwho despite all his sense of mission (and all his joy in publicity) is an advocate of open discourse, didn’t want that, you can believe him. It was still a small defeat.
Unfortunately, the cultural program didn’t really make up for it. It was obvious Florentina Holzinger to have the Prinzendorf Whitsun Play and the Nesterval group stage the camp of an apocalyptic sect; The evening with the Arabic Banū Hilāl epic was interesting. But otherwise references to the topic remained rare. Of course, one can pompously call stories (translated from Viennese to Swedish and then back translated into German-German) “myths of everyday life”, but that is actually a misnomer.
Robert Wilson’s last production, Angélica Liddell’s current extreme theater, an eerie petitesse of Romeo Castelluccithese are highlights that a festival that wants to be recognized internationally simply needs. But with too many productions – just two examples: the agitprop performance “Cassandra“, the post-dramatic parody “Juggle & Hide” – not only lacked connection to the topic, but also quality. Caution! The festival weeks must not fall back into the listless import hodgepodge that they offered during the time of Belgian artistic director Christophe Slagmuylder (2019-2023). Of course, they can’t just bring their own productions, but the selection should be stricter. Ideally at the expense of quantity, by reducing the number of productions, which could then be performed more frequently.
A shrinking of the budget, which the festival has so far been spared in contrast to other cultural institutions, could paradoxically result in a sharpening of the profile. The “Free Republic of Vienna”, presided over by Rau, should examine this idea in its – now probably secularized – committees. And tackle a new topic in a focused manner in 2027. How about pluralism of opinions?
