Schauspielhaus Graz

The dream of life in an infinite state of twilight

First premiere of the season at the Graz Schauspielhaus.

(Bild: Lex Karelly)

The Schauspielhaus Graz is starting the new season with a stage adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh's successful novel "My Year of Rest and Relaxation". Director Ewelina Marciniak tells the story of a world in a state of twilight from which there is no waking up.

Just sleep - for as long as possible. Suddenly there it is, the thought, in the life of the first-person narrator of Ottessa Mashfegh's novel "My Year of Rest and Relaxation". It is, as she says herself, not a political act of absolute refusal ("My comforter is not a banner"), she has simply grown tired of her life, her world.

All doors would actually be open to the daughter of a good New York family - she has studied art history, inherited a small fortune, works for fun in a chic gallery, has friends and a wild affair. But suddenly she realizes the superficiality, even the pointlessness of her existence. A therapist prescribes her various sleeping pills and psychotropic drugs - and so begins her life in an endless stupor.

Wild fever dream
Director Ewelina Marciniak has turned the somnambulistic novel about excessive demands and world weariness into a wild fever dream (stage & costumes: Natalia Mleczak) about a society that is failing at every turn: Luiza Monteira's nuanced performance turns the sleepy main character into the shining star of the evening.

Famous duo: Luiza Monteira as the nameless main character and Olivia Grigolli as her mother

(Bild: Lex Karelly)

Any real feelings left in this superficial world are profitably marketed by an artist friend (Mario Lopatta) and his gallery owner (Marielle Lyher). The therapist (Anke Stedink) also has only empty phrases and her own excessive demands to offer. And the naive friend Reva (Anna Klimovitskaya) is no help either, but a burden. Only the dog (wonderfully shrill: Dominik Puhl) is a form of humorous relief in its animalistic simplicity. However, the main character has the most touching moments with her mother (Olivia Grigolli), who drew the consequences of her excessive demands long before her and took her own life.

Life is a theater
Why live? This big question hovers over this evening of theater, which always presents itself as a simulation: Life is theater and the text a tedious convolute that now truly does not have to be followed verbatim. Especially when there are songs by Britney Spears that have already said it all much more beautifully, much better, much more superficially.

And so this evening does not end, like the original novel set in 2000/2001, with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as an abrupt awakening experience. Instead, Marciniak's version tells the story of how we happily slept on after 9/11.