The Nibelungs

These “Nibelungs” show the elites of a well-known country from the Middle Ages through Stalingrad to the present day. A vicious and varied re-enactment of German family life. This is comedy with depth, where caricature is not only liberating but illuminating too. It is Kriegenburg’s way of wrestling with this text, this subject and this country. A brilliant ensemble turns the catacombs of the court of Burgundy into a portrait of a suffocating society. And at the end everything comes tumbling down: Germany is left dazed in the darkness with Wiebke Puls’ Kremhild as a singular figure of Nemesis. And Kriegenburg has become the battler of Nibelungs, the creator of images, the playmaker.
P.M.

“Kriegenburg conveys the absurdity of their decline through excessively loud music, wild party scenes and ludicrous parodies but the psychology of the individual characters always remains coherent and this succeeds in giving the repeated pathos of Hebbel’s language a more sympathetic tone.” (dpa)