Haunting: “Wasted Land” by Nico and the Navigators
T.S. Eliot wrote his poem "The Waste Land" in 1922 under the impression of numerous crises - as gloomy as it is timeless. A good hundred years later, the theatre collective Nico and the Navigators take on the text and turn it into "Wasted Land" at the Radialsystem.
The performance can be listened to here: https://www.ardaudiothek.de/episode/kultur/eindringlich-wasted-land-von-nico-and-the-navigators/rbb24-inforadio/12549199/
(Recording / Ted Schmitz) "...what branches grow | Out of this stony rubbish?"
What are these roots that are taking hold, what branches are growing | Out of this stony rubbish?
1922, the First World War is over. So is the Spanish flu. There has just been an extraordinary period of drought in Europe. Crises that demoralised people and left the country desolate. Emptiness, including personal emptiness. In his poem "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot delves deep into the mood of the end of time, in fragmented, associative 433 lines, peppered with quotations from past myths and legends and full of glimpses into human abysses and personal states of mind. There is no plot, rather individual events. It is about the office of the dead, drought and flood, strife and the course of events - yesterday and tomorrow.
(Recording / Ted Schmitz) "April is the cruelest month"
April is the cruelest month of all, even spring in T.S. Eliot's work is a hopeless reminder of a deprived winter. NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS take up the gloom over this 'Waste Land' in their "Wasted Land" and rise at the beginning from the fog billowing across the empty stage to play with and around T.S. Eliot's words. Sometimes this resonates with a certain melodrama, sometimes it breaks with it, in which the group ironically exaggerates many a quotation.
(Interlude / Patric Schott) "Tristan and Isolde, first act, verses 1 to 8..."
The music with electric guitar, violin, trumpet, drums and synthesiser is sometimes an atmospheric tapestry of sound, sometimes a propulsive disharmony, then suddenly a cheerful folk song, a blues ballad - a sound space with enough room for your own associations to let yourself drift through lines that don't always make sense, that you don't have to understand to be moved by them.
(Interlude / Wolke Mišewitch, Ted Schmitz) "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over. | This music crept by me upon the waters"
The vocals of NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS sensitively empathise with this. The dance seeks to express the fears and aggression that arise here - forceful, a little formulaic at times. The scenic interpretation also sometimes seems rather performed, only enhanced by the very strained effect of the livecam. Here, one would have wished for more individual accents. Time and again, however, NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS manage to get close to T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land". A poem that, in its fragmentary nature, was intended to offer support to its author. In times of crisis that seem so timeless to us today.
(Interlude / Wolke Mišewitch) "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
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