Letters from Vienna #126
Peter Zadek, Chekhov and Vienna
Remembering Peter Zadek 1926-2009
Ivanov
“After I’d recovered and thought about my projects,” Peter Zadek once wrote, “I came up with “Ivanov”. This was partly because Hermann Beil, the chief dramaturge of the Burgtheater, a great lover of Ibsen and Chekhov, and in general a great lover of the 19th century, wanted me to direct Chekhov or Ibsen for him. We’d talked about it before but hadn’t reached any decision. “The Merchant of Venice”, starring Gert Voss and Eva Mattes, had been a great success and now they wanted something new. So, I had a lot of phone calls with Beil about a possible piece. I was still suffering a lot from the psychological consequences of Hamburg, as well as from illness and actually felt very sorry for myself at that point in time; a state which is uncommon for me because I’m an optimistic person who bounces back quickly. I’d gotten back up, but everything that had happened still affected me a lot – and maybe that’s why I came up with “Ivanov”.”
“What interested me about “Ivanov” was the theme of character assassination. “Ivanov” is the only play I know that has character assassination at its very core. Ivanov is really murdered by gossip. It made me identify very strongly with the figure, even though I hadn’t been murdered. In addition, I’d found an earlier version through research…the known version ends with Ivanov shooting himself, which I’d found implausible. I’d always felt that a man who was in decline, as in this play, who was becoming weaker and weaker and no longer had any vitality whatsoever, would no longer have the strength to shoot himself. I could have imagined him throwing himself off a building, but I just didn’t believe that he’d pull out a revolver and shoot himself. And now I realized that at the premiere he’d died quite differently, he just died. He sat there and was dead. The premiere was a disaster because people didn’t accept the ending – that someone just dies. Chekhov then rewrote the play and, above all, wrote a new ending. There was this older version, which was exactly how I felt – someone being squeezed and slowly driven to their death by constant accusations that had nothing remotely to do with them. I saw Ivanov as a victim. Only the other characters see him as a cynical mastermind. Gert Voss, who played the role, also saw him as a victim, just like I did.”
“After finding the older version, I wondered who could play Ivanov’s Jewish wife... and suddenly I thought of Angela Winkler, with whom I’d never worked before...I met her for dinner one evening and was struck by her vitality, imagination and charm. She was pretty much everything I wanted in an actress...I thought that though Angela wasn’t Jewish, she was exactly the kind of woman I needed to play the Jewish wife. I was so convinced of her that I made the whole project dependent on her participation. In almost all important productions I have these essentials, on which it depends whether I can tackle such a production at all – in this case it was the constellation Angela Winkler – Gert Voss. I knew that once that was given, the rest would probably take care of itself. When it came to stage design, after “The Merchant of Venice”, I had once again reached a point where I wanted to start all over again – stage design got on my nerves. In “The Merchant of Venice” I’d gone very far with a dual concept – Wilfred Minks’ space together with Johannes Grützke’s backdrops – and suddenly I had no desire to deal with stage designs at all. So, my idea was a completely empty stage, maybe with an artificial floor. I phoned Peter Pabst and asked him if he would be willing to do the costumes but warned him that there’d be no set design.”[1]
The Cherry Orchard
Years later Zadek tackled Chekov’s “The Cherry Orchard”, also in Vienna. About this particular project he wrote: “That was, to be honest, one of my best productions. I consider “The Cherry Orchard” to be one of the two the masterpieces of European theater literature, alongside “King Lear”. For me, the two plays are the two great plays of the theatre. I had already staged “The Cherry Orchard” in the 1960s at the State Theater in Stuttgart and then also as a television play. I think the main reason I wanted to stage it in 1996 was because of Angela Winkler; I could suddenly imagine her playing Ranevskaya. And then I thought further and immediately had the perfect cast for the piece. It couldn’t have been better – with Josef Bierbichler as Lopakhin and Ulrich Wildgruber as Gayev and Hermann Lause as Firs and Eva Mattes as Varya. I was still missing the two girls, Ranevskaya’s daughter, Anja, whom I cast with Henry Hübchen’s daughter Theresa...and Regina Stötzel as Dunyasha…”
“In principle, one can say that the quality of a production is already decided when the actors are chosen. That’s half the battle. You have to recognize the right actors, not just think, oh, he might possibly play Lopakhin. You see someone and you recognize in them certain qualities. You know that if you can draw those qualities out, the whole of Lopakhin will be there. And that was the case with almost all the actors. It’s usually only the case with two or three actors in a production. That’s why it worked so well in this case. When Ulli Wildgruber sat there and chatted with the old gentleman who was always running around borrowing money – Martin Schwab – or snapped at the butler – Hermann Lause – it was authentic. And it was more than authentic. It was authentic and was extremely well played too. Authenticity isn’t enough. Then everyone played together. Wildgruber and Lause had been almost a married couple for a long time.”
“It’s hard to say why “The Cherry Orchard” is so important to me. It is about the fundamental conflict between capitalism and humanity. Crazy Ranevskaya is terribly annoying throwing her money around, but she’s human. She has all the bad and good sides that a human being can have. And against this stands the obsessive capitalist Lopakhin. Why he is the way he is, is another question entirely. It’s not his fault. But it’s he who’ll destroy the world. That fascinated me. But all the characters are fascinating... All the characters in the play are wonderful characters...”[2]
One has to add that Zadek studied people extremely carefully indeed and was always curious about those he met; a curiosity which sustained him to the very end. Indeed, it was his fascination with the human mind, which made him a great director. His work for the theatre will be sorely missed.
[1] pp.170-173 Die Wanderjahre, Peter Zadek
[2] pp.291-293 Ibid