Press reviews

[…] Fortunately, the turnaround worked out for Stuttgart, because it made it possible in the successful 2015/16 season – with six new productions this time – to engage four guest directors, three of whom – Kirill Serebrennikov, Christoph Marthaler and Nicola Hümpel – were working at the house for the first time. That this does not have to mean a fundamental departure from the ideal of the workshop idea was demonstrated by the range of the very different aesthetics, which represented an enriching challenge for both the audience and the critics, while maintaining the same high intellectual standards. […]
Nicola Hümpel, who took over the direction of Philippe Boesmans’ setting of Arthur Schnitzler’s “Reigen” for the originally scheduled Susanne Kennedy, proved to be similarly unmasking in her view of eroticism as irritatingly original in her handling of video technology. She, too, refuses the voyeuristic gaze by confronting the play on stage and its video, recorded with the live cam and projected large on the back wall. In doing so, she does not simply double what one sees anyway, but at the same time stages the close-ups of the faces in a new and different way. In this way, she forces the viewer to watch the action twice and to question his or her own gaze in the process. In the Stuttgart ensemble she found the alert, willing performers who celebrate this duplication and ironic commentary with relish – with Matthias Klink once again shining alongside the young Kora Pavelic, just emancipated from the opera studio. If the evening nevertheless seems slightly stale in the memory, this is not due to the staging, but solely to the second-hand music, operatic in the bad sense, which rarely hits the depth of field, even more rarely the wicked wit of the couples talking past each other in the love dialogue. […]

Nicola Hümpel’s Stutttgart performance was a finely interwoven staging of set design, live video (Judith Konnerth) and recorded film sequences… Oliver Proske’s fascinating and subtly elaborate spaces in tandem with the quirky costumes by Teresa Vergho create a tableau that is delightful and perpetually transforming… Balancing existential gravity, grotesque estrangement and a good sense of humor while staying true to the wonderful music of Boesmans.

Schnitzler’s pessimistic “Reigen”, ironized by Luc Bondy and Philippe Boesmans and most recently explored with a light and unconceited touch by Nicola Hümpel, ends not only in cold desires, isolation and despair but with a quiet circling, warmth and emotion. Being propelled, possibly, by love.

Boesmans wrote music for the duration of the “act”… Nicola Hümpel resolves this exceptionally. People sink into mattresses, slip from automated beds and are extraordinarily devoured by each other. On a screen, and at long last the most coherent and unapologetic use of video on stage, are close-ups of their faces. One might catch a glimpse of pure horror, the temporary insanity of lovemaking or the repulsiveness of greed…

… an accessible, open, repetitive and also ironic music, switching almost immediately between pathos and the laconic… Hümpel expands the musical irony scenically lending the highly anticipated premiere an air of lightness… This music theater production is artisanship at its best while precision reigned supreme in the orchestra pit.

The work seems like a flash of brilliance envisioned by Nicola Hümpel who has enriched our scene through remarkable changes in the angles of perception, humor, finesse and a focus on the aesthetically influential use of video.