Burgtheater Vienna

Bernhard’s hellish ride against the cultural bubble

Nicholas Ofczarek and the music band Franui(Bild: Burgtheater / Tommy Hetzel)

The infernal key novel "Holzfällen" with Nicholas Ofczarek and Franui as an exceptional event at the Burg.

A great text, a great actor: in a stroke of luck, that's all it takes for an event. The stroke of luck comes in the form of Bernhard's infernal, melancholy novel "Holzfällen" and the ensemble giant Nicholas Ofczarek. In the midst of demanding filming commitments, he has transformed the hellish musicality of Bernhard's prose with the congenial music band Franui into a thoroughly composed reading lasting two and a half hours. You don't want to miss a minute of it.

"Holzfällen" was the subject of a scandal in 1984, the protagonists of which have been forgotten. Sunk silently in disgust in a wing chair, the autobiographical first-person narrator has suffered the "artistic dinner" of the parvenu Auersberger family. At home, he now rages against the puffed-up castle actor, the penetrating novelist (Jeannie Ebner) and the host couple. Behind them are the Lampersbergs, who patronized the avant-garde of the 1950s at the Tonhof estate in Carinthia.

The couple was most passionate (also in erotic matters) about the young Bernhard. His hateful comments 30 years later led to the book being confiscated. Ofczarek mobilizes all his art of transformation and linguistic virtuosity, he recites the text to the Himalayan heights of triumphant destructiveness and finds points of calm in the mourning for a failed dancer who hanged herself, although she was worth more than the entire cultural bubble. Grandiose.