[…] Once the good old Schauspielhaus theatre had shown well and good and sufficiently long enough everything it did not know how to do, at eleven o'clock in the evening and for an hour and a half it was Jérôme Bel's show's turn to perform, the scope of whose title The show must go on! could only rightly be appreciated after the events which we have just talked about.

Now, everything began again from square one: it was back to basics, with the (almost) entire troupe on stage, whether they knew how to dance or not. The stage, as is normal before someone turns on the light, was plunged in darkness. “ Tonight ”, a song full of promise, poured out from the loudspeakers, but we remained sitting in the dark. There were the first murmurings from the audience which was already getting quite restless. Then from a CD player came “ Let the sun shine in ” but contrary to what was being announced, everything was still in darkness. Then the lights did indeed come on, but everyone in the chorus line stood motionless, as if made of bronze, without even moving a finger. One member of the audience could no longer contain himself, climbed on stage and began to dance. It is rare for blame to be so actively laid. Then with metronomic precision, each performer began to dance disco in their own way, before once again becoming immobile like a robot. Who would have the strongest nerves? The audience was getting fidgety. Even before anything of note had taken place, the stage and the audience were in confrontation, with nerves pretty much on edge. And that is just how easy theatre can be - when you know how to do it.

And then began a game of the hare and the tortoise with disappointed expectations and more subtle surprises. The people down below (in other words, the actors, in the Schauspielhaus' spatial configuration) were, sad to say, always the cleverest, and always just that decisive twitch ahead, drawing as they did on the best known songs in the history of pop music. Everyone knew the song, but no one knew what was going to happen. To “Come together” the performers were still standing immobile as if rooted to the spot, to “Private Dancer” the man manipulating the CDs hastened alone into the circle of light. Once all the members of the troupe, who were not really on form, were busy shaking their hips all they could to the “ Macarena” , they fell into one another's arms to “Into my arms” before almost reducing one another to nothing and disappearing in a pathetic shipwreck. Then when they had all sunk joyfully, there was “Yellow Submarine” and a yellow light shone from below the stage. That way things could be understood too. Then it was “ La vie en rose” with the stage plunged in darkness but with the room and the audience lit up by a kitschy pink light, and with everybody looking at everybody else, with their pink-painted faces. There was the same scrupulous faithfulness to the text, which even a Peter Stein would not have been able to top.

In doing this, the troupe was presented in a perfectly unspectacular way -better and more recognisably than in any more or less successful role: those who shook their limbs in a conventional way, the enthusiastic ones, the pathetic ones, the routinely rhythmic, the ones who swayed awkwardly, sometimes together, sometimes each in their own way. No one could avoid presenting their frighteningly honest ‘visiting cards'. To “Sound of silence” things came finally to a complete rest: the music stopped and in the general silence, no one could restrain themselves any longer. The audience gave way to supposedly intelligent interruptions which became more and more stupid. People shouted “Stop”, “Get off” or, in reaction to some inner policeman, “Get Stromberg on the stage”. The people's soul was boiling. Glad to have met you. All those who, both high up and low down, had watched quietly because they were always the brightest ones, critics included, went back to their homes after an exciting one and a half hours, all feeling small and modest. Or feeling big and carping. But who wants to be a big carper?

theater heute 30.10.2000