Vienna Festival

“Blutstück”: Trauma hippies in the anal phase

Four people and the contributing author (left) at work(Bild: Diana Pfaffmatter)

Kim de l'Horizon's successful "non-binary" novel "Blutbuch" (Blood Book) has been painstakingly re-titled for the Wiener Festwochen.

To avoid any misunderstandings: "Blutbuch" is a good novel. However, it is not so good that it should have won every German-language prize since 2022. Rather, it is the taste of the feuilleton that is making its sluggish waves: In the past, you couldn't even win a sponsorship award without a migration story (or at least a credible lamentation of it), but nowadays "non-binary" stands out. In other words, you can't be assigned to a gender like the "genderfluid Swiss person" Kim de l'Horizon, who made her fortune with "Blutbuch". The dramatization, directed by Leonie Böhm, is now making a guest appearance at the Volkstheater at the invitation of the Festwochen.

However, only a few fragments of the bold character of the text remain. Otherwise, the audience is rather bored in a self-help group of traumatized hippies stuck in the anal phase. The basic tone is woke human instruction, persistently underlined with pedagogical grabbing commands towards the audience.

Human instruction in the inflated landscape.(Bild: Diana Pfaffmatter)

The colorful inflatable landscape and the men in women's lingerie come from the pool of the ever-same. It would be nice to watch the good actors perform. After all, the fate of losing oneself in one's body as an adolescent would provide the best material under friendlier circumstances.

Nevertheless, the three performances are sold out. Apparently the Salzburg Festival made a mistake when, instead of Lars Eidinger in a miniskirt, they put Michael Maertens on the cathedral square as an environmental criminal, thus heralding the end of the inferior production. The non-binary "Jedermann" might, God forbid, have made it another year or two. In contrast to the climate glue "Everyman" - clearly, the way the Greens are currently together.