Die Vernichtung (The Extermination)

A deserted quasi-idyll is the first superb image that Ersan Mondtag, director and designer of the world premiere of Olga Bach’s “Vernichtung”, presents to the audience. Brahms’ “Ein deutsches Requiem” surges through this cunningly sampled nature- and culture-park – and then they plunk onto the scene. Four little people. They gape and marvel and don’t know what to do with all this splendour. Mondtag turns Olga Bach’s kitchen-table drama about young people in search of a kick to fight off the dreariness of everyday life into a total work of art of an incredible atmospheric concentration. The characters are human puppets, clothed in painted foam material. They stalk to and fro, as if pulled by marionette strings, in erratic conversation with each other, moving in behavioural patterns, at times conventional, at others ritual, but consistently without discernible motivation. One of their hobbies is to “cause urban strife”. A community of underemployed do-gooders is crumbling. Mondtag translates this social prognosis into sci-fi sequences of powerful images, heralding the end of the party and a budding appetite for totalitarian groups.

www.konzerttheaterbern.ch