Reviews

That is perhaps the secret recipe of this evening, which offers one of the most successful literary dramatisations. An entertaining condensation that captures the tentacles of the sprawling novel and pointedly conveys the core of Zauberberg, which is very much a certain feeling. And also achieves the feat that one can grasp this piece and this sentiment here without even having read the book.

Christina Böck, Wiener Zeitung

The four actors take turns impersonating Hans Castorp, and the four also provide live dubbing of larger-than-life video projections of themselves in more than a dozen different roles. It's not only the costumes and make-up that are brilliant. The precision with which the actors and actresses interact with their film images is also phenomenal. And the clever distribution of roles.

Ute Baumhackl, Kleine Zeitung Kärnten

About Der Zauberberg

"Then, like a thunder-peal-

But God forbids and modesty withholds us from speaking over—much of what the thunder-peal bore us on its wave of sound! Here rodomontade is out of place. Rather let us lower our voices to say that then came the peal of thunder we all know so well; that deafening explosion of long accumulated cartridges of passion and spleen. That historic thunder-peal, of which we speak with bated breath, made the foundations of the earth to shake; but for us it was the shock that fired the mine beneath the magic mountain, and set our sleeper ungently outside the gates. Dazed he sits in the long grass and rubs his eyes—a man who, despite many warnings, had neglected to read the papers."

That "thunder-peal" is World War I. It rips Hans Castorp out of his seven-year "enchantment" in a pulmonary sanatorium in Davos, out of the ivory tower of an outmoded European bourgeoisie, out of his self-optimisation process in an "atmosphere of death and amusement". Where just moments before he had been dining with two Armenians, two Finns, an Uzbek Jew and a Kurd at the "bad Russian table", he now suddenly finds himself lurching into the trenches of Europe. Thomas Mann's novel about these seven prewar years—which, like its protagonist, seems to hold the events occurring in the "lowlands" at arm's length—describes the "acute irritability" preceding this European and global wildfire. Bastian Kraft directs a compact cast in this production of one of Thomas Mann's main works, after having previously directed Klaus Mann's Mephisto and Marianne Fritz´s Die Schwerkraft der Verhältnisse, also at the Burgtheater.

Credits

Playwright: Thomas Mann (in a version by Bastian Kraft)

Director: Bastian Kraft

Cast:

Tilman Tuppy as Hans Castorp, Frl. Engelhardt, Mme Chauchat, Hippe, Peeperkorn

Dagna Litzenberger Vinet as Hans Castorp, Joachim, Herr Albin, Hermine Kleefeld

Markus Meyer as Hans Castorp, Dr. Krokowski, Frau Stöhr, Hofrat Behrens, Schwester Oberin

Sylvie Rohrer as Hans Castorp, Tous-les-deux, Settembrini, Naphta

Stage Design: Peter Baur

Costumes: Jelena Miletić

Music: Björn SC Deigner

Video: Sophie Lux

Lighting: Michael Hofer

Make-up/Video: Lena Damm

Dramaturgy: Sebastian Huber

Assistant Director: Theresa Jarczyk, Uwe Reichwaldt

Production Support: Claudia Vallant

Costume Assistance: Mareike Seeger

Stage Management: Dagmar Zach

Soufflage: Barbara Emila Dauer

The project would like to express its special thanks to Mr. Chen Ping and Austrian Cultural Forum/Austrian Embassy Beijing for their assistance and support.

About Bastian Kraft

Director Bastian Kraft began his theater career as an assistant director at the Burgtheater. This was followed by productions at many major theaters in the German-speaking world, including Thalia Theater Hamburg, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Schauspielhaus Zürich and Burgtheater Wien. Bastian Kraft studied Applied Theater Studies in Giessen(Germany) and lives in Zurich and Berlin. This is his second production at Wuzhen.

About Burgtheater

As the Austrian national theatre, the Burgtheater is the leading playhouse in the Republic and Europe's largest theatre for drama, combining tradition, variety and innovation. After the Comédie Française, the Vienna Burgtheater is Europe's second oldest theatre. Today, the Burgtheater—originally known as K. K. Hoftheater nächst der Burg—with its three affiliated venues, Akademietheater, Kasino and Vestibül, and a permanent ensemble of actors and actresses, is one of Europe's largest theatres and plays a seminal role in the German-speaking theatrical world. Each season, the Burgtheater and its affiliated venues welcome approximately 400,000 theatre-goers to some 800 performances. This makes the Burgtheater the theatre with the largest audience in continental Europe.