Alma Mahler: Female Ego Against Male

You can go into exile with Franz Werfel, watch Oskar Kokoschka attempting to rape Alma Mahler, accompany Gustav Mahler to his grave, or admire Alma in her triple incarnation. And naturally, you are at liberty to wander at will between these and numerous other scenes which fill the Palazzo Zenobio with theatrical life. What is certain is that you will always miss something, in this piece of theatre which is spread over two floors of the Palace and gardens, and which even includes a short boat trip along the canals.

Alma is a turbulent and moving affair which demonstrates how neither individuals nor epochs can ever be grasped in their full complexity.

Following several successful years at the Sanatorium Purkersdorf in Vienna, Alma, the hit play based on a script by Joshua Sobol and produced for stage by Paulus Manker, has relocated to Venice. On 22 August, the performance, which tells of the effects of a society in decline at the turn of the twentieth century, has its premiere at the Palazzo Zenobio.

The Venice version of the performance was presented at three previews. The most significant change is the language. In Venice, Alma is played in a mixture of English and Italian, with a few moments in German. It sounds confusing, but it is astonishingly well organized. If, for instance, we accompany Franz Werfel, we are following the Italian strand; Helmut Berger speaks predominantly English, etc. The second major difference is the atmosphere. The Palazzo Zenobio is richly decorated with stucco elements, paintings and mirrors, and on top of that, it is now more or less packed with theatre props. Here, we are truly in another world, far more removed from the present than amid the stark architecture of the Sanatorium Purkersdorf.

As for the performers, Alma's inner conflict is brought out superbly in the three different Alma roles, representing the young seductress (Lea Mornar), the earthy Alma (Nicole Ansari-Cox) and the intellectual (Wiebke Frost). The long-suffering Franz Werfel is rendered convincingly by Nikolaus Paryla, and the fragile figure of Gustav Mahler, progressive and yet firmly rooted in the nineteenth century, is perfectly embodied by Helmut Berger.

As if on a high and yet ever returning to a considered and calculating mode, Paulus Manker performs the figure of Oskar Kokoschka. Xaver Hutter gives a sound rendering of Walter Gropius, the jealous lover, conveying the architect's professional dimension.

The fact that all participants in the Alma drama are boundless egotists bothered about nothing other than their own concerns, such as power, fame and their own feelings, reaches its climax in the person of old Alma (Milena Vukotic).
The multilingual aspect has enriched Alma by a further dimension; an international production in the best sense.

by Henriette Horny/Kurier, Tuesday 20 August 2002

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