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🇦🇹 Austria /Culture & Society

Crypto-Celtic “Merlin” gets a sharp start at the Akademietheater

From Der Standard · () German

Translated from German and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Sources not specified Context piece
  • Antú Romero Nunes opens the new season at Vienna’s Akademietheater with Tankred Dorst and Ursula Ehler’s “Merlin or The Wasteland.”
  • The production blends Swiss, Middle High German and Celtic sounds into a playful artificial language.
  • The review presents the 1981 fable about utopias and their failure as an entertaining fantasy treatment of the struggle between good and evil.

“Merlin or The Wasteland” opens the new season at Vienna’s Akademietheater in a playful mixture of Swiss, Middle High German and Celtic sounds.

Antú Romero Nunes has turned Tankred Dorst and Ursula Ehler’s 1981 Arthurian drama into what the review calls warm-hearted showman’s theatre. The production treats the weighty fairy tale about utopias and their failure as something that has passed through a druid’s magic cauldron.

Arthur, Merlin, Ginevra and the other characters debate the opposing forces of good and evil in a charming fantasy German. The Devil, played by Marie-Luise Stockinger, enthusiastically fires off noise and battle din, while Queen Ginevra, played by Katharina Lorenz, has long become unmoved by it.

The production’s opening cry, “Now the show begins!”, captures the deliberately theatrical spirit of the performance and its invented language.

Now the show begins!

· Production lineThe phrase captures the production’s playful, invented theatrical language at the start of the new season.
About this summary

Originally published by Der Standard in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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