Staatsschauspiel Dresden | Frank Castorf: Appearance of the Three Whores

How should one speak today about the French Revolution and the bloody-beautiful year of 1789? And what can we say about the failure of this great transformation? The decline following the brief euphoria continues, as we know, to this day. It's not foolish to look at the beginning of the end.

But where can this beginning be found? Surely not with the Restoration, or even with old Bonaparte on his galloping horse? Frank Castorf has gone in search of it with Georg Büchner and his revolutionary drama "Danton's Death."

Let's remember: It's the year 1794, and the king has been without his head since last winter. The struggle for the future of a free France is in flux. The Girondists, still all too closely tied to the old order, have been disempowered; the radical left, social-revolutionary Hébertists fared no better. This leaves the repentant revolutionary Georges Danton, who had just gotten his hands dirty in the September Massacres but now demands more republic and less revolution, and his opponent de Robespierre, the guardian of virtue with a penchant for the guillotine. The latter is supposed to triumph for a short time, until his little head rolls too.

Frank Castorf famously dislikes staging the classics from the page, as if he had no ideas of his own. And when he exposes not only freedom, but also its two sisters, equality and fraternity, as whores, he calls on his old acquaintance Heiner Müller for help. He had promised the world a "memory of a revolution" with his drama "The Assignment." This play about the unsuccessful export product of revolution, about a slave revolt that was to be initiated in Jamaica and help the new ideas from France achieve their universal legitimacy, completes Büchner's work. In its homeland, the revolution devours its children; far away, it is nipped in the bud.

"Galloudec to Antoine. I am writing this letter on my deathbed." These are the opening lines of the premiere last Friday at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden. By Müller, not Büchner. Castorf has often referenced "The Assignment" in his works, but this time the play is more than that. The entire drama unfolds, intercut with Büchner's dramatic chronicle of two weeks in revolutionary times.

We alternate between the Palais Royal in Paris and Port Royal in Jamaica. And one senses that the British colonies in the Caribbean will not be able to afford Dantonism. The deathbed of the revolution has already been prepared in both parts of the world.

Aleksandar Denić has staged a gigantic structure, walkable, revolving, and revealing a different world from all sides. "Procope" is written on a sign above the restaurant, where the upper class apparently once dined and where emancipatory bon vivants à la Danton now make do. "L'objet qui parle..." – the talking object – is written above the arms shop next door. A Citibank sign is visible on the side, a reminder that the national bank of France, located on the Place de la Bastille, remained untouched when the uprising was rehearsed almost two and a half centuries ago.

Once the revolving stage begins to move, or the live cameras allow us a glimpse into the inner workings of the stage set, further dimensions are revealed: an oversized portrait of Emiliano Zapata points ahead to the liberation struggles in Mexico; a Beatles advertising banner indicates the relocation of the revolution to the realm of pop culture and thus its dwarfism.

The eleven-member ensemble relishes every idea the director throws at them. Among them, Frank Pätzold stands out as the zealous Robespierre. The revolutionary euphoria is contagious. This makes the swan song of the freedom struggle all the more gruesome. Müller's laconic language reinforces the power of Büchner's unwieldy drama, so that in the end, both authors benefit from each other.

The three-and-a-half-hour first part of this theater evening culminates in Heiner Müller's monologue of a man in an elevator, a key scene from "The Assignment." After a flag is unfurled the entire height of the entrance, blanketing the entire stage in red, Torsten Ranft plays the role of the employee awaiting his assignment. Not knowing where to go in this elevator full of men in suits. He delivers his lines with a Saxon accent and doesn't get lost in slapstick, but rather clears up the great revolutionary chaos on stage beforehand, ensuring great linguistic, literary, and intellectual clarity. You've never heard these lines like this before. And you understand that who feels called to revolution is no small matter. The petty bourgeois isn't born to fight on the barricades.

After this energetic opening, the audience returns euphorically after the interval. But only one scene remains of Müller's "commission," the clever interweaving of two themes is undone, and, it seems, Frank Castorf's sharp thesis has already been used up.

A bit of "Hamlet" (which Castorf will bring to the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg for the opening of the next season) finds its way into the production. Otherwise, Acts Three and Four of "Danton's Death" are also dutifully staged. After the impressive first part, the staging seems somewhat uninspired and lacking in clarity. And so the rest of the action meanders along for almost three hours.

"Castorf's theater has to hurt—for everyone involved," says a man in the row behind me, who wants to present himself as an expert to his neighbors. But it's not that simple. It's absolutely true: Castorf needs the long stretches on stage; only with advance notice does he reach his full potential. His best evenings then brim with vitality—and there can be no talk of suffering, for anyone involved. But in this production, the director was unable to find a conclusion.

Robespierre wanted to defend himself by all means against a "half-revolution" that would only be completed by the guillotine. Perhaps it would have taken courage to cut this "half-production" a little shorter with a sharp blade?

Next performances: May 3, 17, and June 8. www.staatsschauspiel-dresden.de