Stefan Bachmann is staging an adaptation of Feuchtwanger’s “Erfolg” at the Munich Residenztheater. A revue of horror, nightmarish, spooky – and very entertaining.
This evening of theater is stonewalling, literally. The whole stage is built up with a wall of grey-black cubes, like a bulwark against everything that might come from outside. Then a slit opens up, wider and wider, until the whole ensemble becomes visible in the open window box. Ten figures huddled together, palely made-up faces, all but one in black, all fearful and to be feared. It is a crowd and a crowd from which they chant the first movements in chorus. A worldwide politicization of the judiciary in the years after the First World War is advertised, from which they come straight to “their” case and in roles that are now emerging: the case of Martin Krüger, “in Germany, in the state of Bavaria”, as does Lion Feuchtwanger told it in all its ramifications in his novel “Erfolg” published in 1930.