At 19.30 last night, a Twilight of the Gods descended on Sarajevo’s National Theatre. The play, produced on the basis of an original story and a screenplay initially developed by Nicolo Badalucca, Enrico Medioli i Luchino Visconti for a film of the same name, began as a conspiracy story, and ended as a story of the decline of a family, but also of the entire world surrounding it.
February 1933. The Reichstag burns in the night. The same night, old Joachim celebrates his birthday. Everyone is there: Sophie, his son’s widow, her son Martin, a transvestite, Friedrich, Sophie’s lover, Joachim´s gay nephew Konstantin, Konstantin’s son Gunther, Joachim´s other nephew Herbert, his wife Elisabeth, their daughter Thilde, and Von Aschenbach, an SS officer. By the end of the evening, Joachim will no longer be around, Herbert runs, Martin inherits everything, and Friedrich suddenly becomes a significant factor. By the end of June 1934, Sophie will help kill Elisabeth and Thilde, Herbert will kill both himself and Von Aschenbach, Martin kills Sophie and Friedrich, Gunther kills Konstantin and Martin, at Martin’s persistent request. Gunther, the most sensitive member of the family who was most repulsed by the SS and wanted to leave Germany in its infected state, takes over Joachim’s throne, behind him an SS soldier, protecting him.
Diego de Brea purposely emphasizes the changing and extremely perverted behaviour of his characters. They are all defected, all dying gods. In a crisis, our Greek gods show their true faces, and slowly, all the sublime that we admired them for at the outset, disappears. In the end, even Gunther becomes that which he most hates. The violoncello remains somewhere in the back, one which Konstantin threatens to break, and Gunther proves that, every time the world around us starts to collapse, we become something different, distant and entirely alien, for one simple reason: in order to survive.
Nicolo Badalucca, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti: Twillight of the Gods; Direction: Diego de Brea; Dramaturgy: Diana Koloini; Set design: Diego de Brea; Mask design: Barbara Pavlin; Cast: Sandi Pavlin, Maruša Geymayer-Oblak, Matija Vastil, Uroš Maček, Ivan Godnič, Željko Hrs, Pavle Ravnohrib, Romana Šalehar, Nataša Travnikar, Dario Varga, Boris Kos Janek, Ivan Rupnik, Jadranka Tomažić, Olga Grad
Tina Šmalcelj |
