Cosmos Theater

Gertin Drassl’s virtuoso epilogues

Gerti Drassl at the Kosmos Theater in Vienna

(Bild: © Bettina Frenzel)

Marlene Streeruwitz's commissioned work "Nachsagungen", in which the Austrian writer deals with the subject of femicide, celebrated its premiere at the Kosmos Theater in Vienna. On stage Gerti Drassl, who shows great, moving acting skills.

It is a disturbing, virtuoso text: violence against women, including attempted or actual murder, a topic that has long been on everyone's mind. The story is told from the perspective of the victims: the dead and the survivors, or the bereaved, devastated by fantasies of guilt and revenge. An old policeman appears who cannot get the bloody images of the crime scene out of his head. Marlene Streeruwitz has thus written a series of sensitively differentiating monologues. This makes the few Wikipedia-feminist pedagogical interludes seem all the more superfluous: Here, every literary word speaks for itself.

What Gerti Drassl shows is great, moving acting. She transforms herself into all the characters and always remains in the format of the central tragedienne. Laura Andreß' and Stefan Schweigert's production dispenses with all the fuss: a linen curtain with a blood-red tear running through it, a few fluorescent tubes, shadows that refer to Hades. What senseless ostentation you often see on larger stages!