What was on offer at the end of the Schwetzingen Festival

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Then it's off to the Rokokotheater, where the SWR Festival bids farewell to its artistic director Heike Hoffmann and welcomes over 18,000 mostly paying visitors this year. The finale features a premiere: Nico and the Navigators want to let us know „The whole Truth about Lies" in their current production. Which, of course, cannot work at all, but the topic is as relevant as ever. If not omnipresent.

The artistic means employed by Nico and the Navigators are virtuoso, especially the dance interludes

Nico and her collective of stage technicians, actors, musicians and dancers navigate through the vast land of sophisticated deception – which is even bigger than Putin's Russia or Trump's America. It is inevitable that the compass will have to lurch. But the artistic means employed are often virtuoso, especially in the dance interludes. These include brilliant slow-motion sequences. And in the background, a semi-transparent hall of mirrors creates the illusion of gravity being overcome. The expansion of the stage into digital space also creates fascinating effects.

As far as the musical aspect is concerned, the selected pop songs, some of which are interpreted in highly original ways, are particularly convincing. At the very end is ‘Gimme Some Truth’: in 1971, John Lennon begged for a tiny bit of truth. But even back then, that was rather rare. Because there was also a master of lies like ‘Tricky Dicky’, as Lennon wrote. Who did he mean by that? President Richard Nixon.

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