Wycinka Holzfällen

The former student, passionate about music, who returns to Vienna after all these years; the man in his fifties with diseased lungs who learns of the suicide through hanging of a childhood friend whom he has not seen for decades; the now well-known writer who, much to his surprise and horror, accepts the invitation to a dinner supposedly dedicated to the memory of Joana, but which was actually organized prior to her death in honour of the elderly Burgtheater actor - the man we are talking about bares a strong resemblance to Thomas Bernhard.

Almost as soon as it was published in Austria in 1984, Woodcutters was banned following the issuing of legal proceedings against its author by the composer Gerhard Lampersberg, who recognized himself in the character of Auersberger (the senile and pretentious “successor to Schönberg” who hosts the “artistic dinner” in his Gentzgasse apartment to which the writer is invited). Bernhard, the scandal-monger, could not possibly have ignored the inevitable parallels that the whole of Vienna would draw. It was common knowledge that he himself had ties with the Lampersberg. Similarly, during the 1950’s, whilst still a young man and prior to his notoriety, Joana’s great friend had been a frequent visitor to the Auersberger before suddenly, one day, ending all contact with them, without a word of explanation. He also severed all links with their whole Viennese circle of friends, in order to pursue the work which would make of him, the only one of the clique, a true artist. Thus, the autobiographical element is plain to see. Beneath its cruelly satirical surface, Woodcutters is also a coming-of-age novel, a chilling work of introspection which veers towards destruction and massacre, and which relates, at a distance of thirty years, the first steps of an up-and-coming artist in an environment where he could all too easily lose sight of his true vocation. For the duration of the “artistic dinner”, the time of bygone days, illusions and discoveries, is confronted with the abominable present, in the form of the last-minute guest. And during this evening of reminiscences, only one voice rings out amidst all the lack of authenticity and, even if it means abolishing it in the minutes which follow, tells, simply and plainly, that thing which is so incredible that it is almost rendered inaudible: the truth, or at least something of it.

For this his return to the Odéon, Krystian Lupa has come back to one of his preferred authors on a subject which he holds close to his heart: the (unashamedly) spiritual dimension which drives the solitary quest of truly creative minds. The show, backed up (as is always the case with Lupa) by performers doted with mesmerizing presence and powers of concentration, was a runaway success at the 2015 Avignon Festival. An ode to flights of freedom and melancholy reunion, a hypocritical comedy of old friends, self-loathing and that of others, which we run the risk of looking like, shame and unease in the face of a bygone past which never fails to carry on into a hideous decrepitude, and moralistic, blood-curling humour. And hatred, an implacable hatred of all the mediocre trade-ins that all of us are capable, from time to time, of indulging in. All of this is to be found in Woodcutters, a cruel meditation on the powers of artifice and lies which falsify our existence.