Theater Christoph Marthaler's wicked grotesque of hopelessness

Christoph Marthaler opened Basel's 2024/2025 theater season on Friday with an absurdly comical grotesque about disoriented people falling into the maw of the extreme right. The premiere audience celebrated the production with frenetic applause.

As is so often the case in productions by the well-known director Christoph Marthaler, a society of lost souls gathered on the stage of the Basel Schauspielhaus, searching in the most awkward way for orientation in a world that has lost its way.

However, in this project with the strange title "Doctor Watzenreuther's Legacy - A Wishful Thinking Error", he plays a nasty game that we are not used to seeing from him. In a grotesque panopticon, he traces the downfall of fellow human beings who, in their disorientation, fall into the clutches of well-known right-wing extremist prophets of salvation until everything collapses at the end.

The premiere audience in Basel honored the director and his well-rehearsed team with thunderous applause.