Arts and Letters

With Lipsynch, Robert Lepage has gifted audiences to this year’s Vienna Festival with another one of his powerful theatre marathons – his distinctive civilizational, if playful, tool.

Lipsynch, a multilayered “dramedy” (an epic character story) is a re-enactment of what has been creatively constructed through hours of improvisational workshops since June 2005. The Quebecois artist presents the most unlikely characters that his internationally acclaimed ensemble keeps re-molding and stringing together.

Will Frank Castorf lie down with Chekhov before you lie down with Frank Castorf? The Berliner Volksbühne’s star director dropped by Festwochenville Jun. 11-13 with his Nach Moskau, Nach Moskau, a four-hour Russian-commissioned paroxysm cut wildly against the usual Chekhovian grain, where the Three Sisters is fitfully interspersed with Chekhov’s peasant story “Muzhiki.” Some chortled; some strolled resolutely for the exits.

When Screwball comedy became famous in the 1930’s, it opened a new chapter for theater. It created a female character rarely seen in the history of Western entertainment, one that dominates men and challenges the concept of maleness. It introduced unlikely situations between characters and brought in a fast-paced dialogue never before seen.

There’s no such thing as a coincidence! That’s been said all the way from the ancient Greeks until Wittgenstein.

On Thursday, Jun. 17, Bertrand de Billy conducted his last subscription concert at the Musikverein as the music director of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna (RSO), exactly the same day that, at 13:11, the new ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Company) statutes were ratified in Parliament. The new law brings a number of reforms (both of this world and the next), but what is really important is that it guarantees the continued existence of this enormously important orchestra.

Every summer, Vienna becomes the centre of the dance world for one month between mid-July and mid-August when ImPulsTanz brings the world of contemporary dance to Vienna. Every day of the week there are two or three world-class performances during the long summer evenings, followed by parties late into the night. This year, there are even midnight performances in the Wild Walk series, with shows starting at 11:30pm.

“Wien im Film” (Vienna in the Movies: Images of the city from 100 years), the current exhibition at the Wien Museum, is not a film festival. Instead, it is a unique and innovative exhibition comprised solely of film clips that cumulatively create a portrait of the city.

You approach the Palais Pallavicini in Vienna’s 1st District to the ringing sound of hooves, the suspended gate of a pair of carriage horses, and it is easy to let a century melt away, taking you back to the scenes and courtesies of Habsburg Vienna.

Every theater has its pitfalls. Just a cliché? But it’s just as common as the superstition in show business that you don’t whistle in the halls or on the stairs of a temple to the muses.

The Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) prides itself on introducing Vienna to unfamiliar, even unknown art, sometimes in the face of strong criticism. Past shows have included seminal exhibits of Soviet art and architecture, Indian poster art, and Cuban architecture. In May, the MAK opened perhaps its most controversial show ever: “Flowers for Kim Il Sung: Art and Architecture from the People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea.”

Slovakia continues to struggle with its national theater for music, opera and dance, the SND. The SND has been in a hunt for new leadership for the last nine months. The latest conflagration comes as the Bratislava public and new general director Ondrej Šoth trade blows over the fate of popular ballet director Mário Radačovský.