Robert Tanitch reviews Ahnen at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London EC1
If you have seen any of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch productions you will know what to expect. Ahnen, premiered in 1987, set amongst enormous cacti, lasts just under three hours and is a typical Pina Bausch piece with actors coming and going and doing strange and often boring things.
The audience sits in respectful silence as if they were in church.
Ahnen is fractionally better than last week’s Auf dem Gebirge in that there are some funny moments. I enjoyed the translation of Bizet’s Carmen.
Best of all was the man looking through his totally empty diary to find a suitable date for a meeting.
In the second act, after the interval, the safety-curtain came down and refused to go back up.
The audience thought at first it was all part of the production; understandably so, since it could so easily have been a Bausch joke.
Eventually an actor announced there would be another interval of twenty minutes whilst they fixed it. The bulk of the audience at this point decided they had been bored enough and it was a good moment to leave. And that included me
Pina Bausch died young at 68 in 2009, leaving behind a large body of work, some 46 pieces.
I hope the next time Tanztheater Wuppertal comes back to London that they will bring one of their very best productions.
It would be great to see Café Müller again.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website
