Frau Hess and Her Gardens

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome! Fremde, etranger, stranger! Alexander Hausvater's production is a cabaret of theatre, dance and music, mixing styles of playing, text, image, opera, comedy, frenzy, alcohol, sensuality, sexuality. Through the grotesque, irony, black humour and the macabre, the magic of cabaret crystallises the impossible relationship between Frau Hess - extreme, eccentric, aristocratic, a member of the National Socialist Party - and Isaac Baum, the proud Jew torn by the conflict of giving up his own identity in order to belong to her world. Who is the torturer? Who is the victim? In a disturbing, bewildering time (Germany, 1944), their consciences go to trial with history over the question of guilt, and suffering sharpens their sensitivity to the accusations levelled at them. From a position of moral superiority, the two accuse without taking anything upon themselves, absolving themselves of all guilt. In a world of the unconscious and the subconscious, where what you hear is not what is said, what is sung is not what is felt and what seems is not what is, the other Wagnerian actors are the shards of emotion and thought of the two central characters. The company of the State Jewish Theatre sets out to rediscover new meanings and to take a fresh look at a subject that seems exhausted but is, sadly, inexhaustible. A clear-eyed, violent, grave and courageous look at a tragedy of which "History knows no destruction of human life comparable to this." (Witold Pilecki)