Service at court spoils character. Or don't let him get up at all. The quintessence of the entire guidebook literature for guidebooks is: bend over in time! In Laura Linnenbaum's production of Schiller's tragedy "Maria Stuart" at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, the high-born servants of the English Queen Elisabeth have to bend down very low to gain land on all fours on the sloping levels that are stacked on the stage. The counts, barons and knights trot along one behind the other, draft horses of omnipotence and pack donkeys of complicity. As the crisis nears its climax, the Queen takes her place at the head of the procession. The monarch must also bow before the ideal of supra-personal sovereignty. There is nothing to hold on to when climbing. The construction of the modern statethe Tudor Revolution in the manner of government: Sisyphus toil in column, without bullet.
Patrick Bahners
Feuilleton correspondent in Cologne and responsible for "Humanities".
Follow I follow
The creeps are rewarded with being allowed to mark the strong men where the government sets an example.
Elisabeth's prisoner of state, the Queen of Scotland, does not only receive isolated bad news and hope bearers at her Düsseldorf Schattenhof.
All of her interrogations and confessions take place in front of a male audience, in a theater of psychological terror.
The court officials wear business suits as a uniform: this eternally modern state does not know of any fashion revolutions.
Under the eyes of their own, officially legitimate queen, the gray gentlemen step out of line, valiantly trying to make their mark.
The extract of reason of state
Burleigh (Andreas Grothgar) has aged extremely well in government service; perhaps one of Her Majesty's privateers brought him a vial from the New World from the fountain of eternal youth; or reason of state itself is an extract of vitality. Leicester, on the other hand (Wolfgang Michalek), squander their gifts. In years of wooing his virgin queen, he has put on a small tummy, but has retained the nonchalance with which a court careerist can thwart self-discipline. The intriguer presents himself as a free man, but even if he behaves carelessly in dealing with his own plan, its outcome will soon appear in the embassy reports, in the notes on travel across the Channel. The Düsseldorf ministers are quite distinctive role portraits. But they remain types and do not become characters.Should the nurturing of court officials with characteristics of psychic distinction be a neoliberal legend?
In "Maria Stuart" in the workshop of the Theater Bonn, Matthias Köhler has three male actors play all the roles except for the two queens.
Markus Bachmann, Nicolas Streit and Klaus Smorek are made up in white, clad in white and have wings in white, and they wear black Prince Valiant wigs as prancing picture-book figures of chivalry transfigured to the point of unmanliness.
Sometimes they speak a speech by one of the lords in unison, then again it has to be determined in a duel who may play Sir Mortimer and who has to play the Earl of Leicester.