MONSTER’S PARADISE • HAMBURG
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Tanja Dorendorf
REVIEW MONSTER’S PARADISE: GAMECHANGER SHAKES UP THE HAMBURG STATE OPERA
The premiere of Monster’s Paradise is a lavishly staged piece of political satire that storms through the Hamburg State Opera, leaving the astonished audience in a mixture of unease and cheerfulness.
The newly appointed theater director, star director Tobias Kratzer, has set out to strengthen the opera’s relevance by changing the repertoire from being a museum piece to becoming present, engaging contemporary art on a par with a modern theater audience. Kratzer is known for his ability to mix satire, pop culture, political theater, and classical opera dramaturgy, and he is a bold choice for the position. He hits the ground running from the start.
Photo: Tanja Dorendorf
As a statement and stage production, Monster’s Paradise is a success for Kratzer, who shakes the dust off opera, which in recent years has been less than exciting in its repertoire choices and execution. A game changer was needed – and I can promise you that this musical-dramatic fusion, which I would almost rather call an event than an opera, is just that.
As a play, Monster’s Paradise is thoroughly entertaining – but it can also be criticized for being one-sidedly propagandistic, predictable, and naively bordering on the blue-eyed.
Two supernatural vampires, Vampi and Bampi, supposedly avatars of the play’s two hyped authors Elfriede Jelinek and Olga Neuwirth, decide to visit our troubled world to see what the hell we are up to.
Photo: Tanja Dorendorf
Their first stop is the White House in Washington, where a Donald Trump parody wearing a royal crown terrorizes his surroundings from the Oval Office.
In the guise of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, the avatars try to kill Trump, who, however, seems to be invulnerable and soon grows into a huge, infantile balloon version of himself that fills the entire stage, while an absurd chorus of zombies in tattered suits rampage through the set. Maga fans? Rebels? Trump is cheered on by advisors dressed as Mickey Mouse and surrounded by a quartet of scantily clad Disney princesses in cheerleader versions with sequined costumes and glittery pom poms.
Soon, however, Trump moves on to warmer climes that mimic Mar-a-Lago, where he drives around in a golf cart. Here we meet a giant sea monster named Gorgonzilla—a grotesque, dinosaur-like figure who may be able to avert the planet’s impending doom. Gorgonzilla was created as a result of an explosion at a nuclear power plant and now offers himself as the savior and protector of humanity.
Photo: Tanja Dorendorf
Trump’s attempt to isolate Gorgonzilla on a deserted island fails despite the use of military force, and in a theatrically beautiful, low-tech battle scene, Gorgonzilla devours Trump as easily as a cheese sandwich – only to return to the sea and let the burning planet perish to the strains of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.
The allegories and symbolic nature of the plot are SO ripe for interpretation, and along the way also manage to reference climate change, artificial intelligence, and the divine feminine, with large video projections of Charlotte Rampling as the Goddess, who speaks to us staged as the sun face from Teletubbies.
Photo: Tanja Dorendorf
Olga Neuwirth’s music is a crazy jukebox with wild, fragmented soundscapes of electronica and distorted entertainment music mixed with rock bands and a sea of samples.
The result is original, to say the least, and cannot be accused of being anywhere near opera singing or recognizable melodies. Solo singing is mostly replaced by sprechstimme (speak-singing), an expressionistic vocal technique somewhere between singing and speaking.
Video: Janic Bebi/Jonas Dahl
In a visually stunning and elementally moving apocalyptic finale video, Vampi and Bampi sail off into the sunset on a raft, playing Schubert’s F minor fantasy four-handed on an untuned, semi-mechanical concert grand piano – as a metaphor for the powerlessness of art in a world out of control.
You sit back and ponder the meaning of it all: an image of human stupidity. Can’t we do a little better?
Four stars from GOT TO SEE THIS for a stunning production that is certainly challenging, but also entertaining and, in a strange way, really moving.
