Elfriede Jelinek’s “Unter Tieren” seems beyond saving, yet Nicolas Stemann rescues it

Elfriede Jelinek’s latest text begins with a problem of its own: people who understand economics rarely write well, while those who write well understand economics even less often. The Nobel laureate appears to prove that both abilities can coexist, but, the review argues, at the wrong end of that contrast.

“Unter Tieren,” now being performed at Vienna’s Burgtheater after Salzburg, does not offer a useful lesson in economic theory. There is no sustained discussion of Hayek and Mises, Wieser’s marginal utility or Schumpeter’s creative destruction. Instead, across 216 pages, or 110 in the condensed theatre version, Jelinek explores what she considers “economics” through a torrent of verbal associations.

The review compares the text to a second-year student newly fascinated by Marx and Joyce, recalling childhood fables, collections of quotations and 15 years of “Krone” headlines. Jelinek herself openly admits that she knows little about economics, saying she can borrow “the animals’ lack of knowledge.”

“

the animals’ lack of knowledge

On the page, the result seems almost impossible to rescue. On stage, Nicolas Stemann manages exactly that. His four-hour reading evening, performed without an interval, proves far more entertaining than either the text or its description would suggest. The words become almost incidental, and not everything can be heard or understood. That, the critic suggests, may be an advantage.

The production finds comic force in visual details that are absent from the book. Actors wearing René Benko masks carry props off the stage while saying, “Sorry, that belongs to my mother.” Caroline Peters reaches comic heights as the rabbit, while the animal chapters, costumes and performances give the work energy. Stemann’s direction turns what appears to be an unmanageable text into an unexpectedly lively evening.

“

Sorry, that belongs to my mother