496
PARTISAN rUVIEW
of zealous factionalism and politicized bloodthirst. Fueled by vicious edi–
torials, by statements of public figures who found themselves attacked in
those passages, including Waldheim and Chancellor Vranitzky, celebrities
and would-be VIP's from all walks of life - none of whom had read the
complete script - and followed by letters to the editors, the most mali–
cious insults were exchanged in a style that recalled the rhetoric of Vi–
enna's troubled past, with implications that Hitler would have known
what to do with the likes of Peymann and Bernhard. Bernhard himself
was hit with a walking stick by an elderly gentleman, right in the center
of Vienna's fashionable first district; the tires of a prominent Bernhard
actor from Peymann's German company were repeatedly slashed; and
Peymann received threatening letters.
The preproduction drama, fueled on both sides, it seems, with de–
vious (as a native Viennese
r
am tempted to call it typically Austrian)
pleasure, reached a feverish pitch on the day of the opening. The
Kronenzeitung,
Austria's most sensationalist, arch-conservative tabloid, a
staunch supporter ofWaldheim and opponent of Bernhard and Peymann,
displayed on its front page an "ad on its own behalf," consisting of a
photomontage of the Burgtheater in flames with the suggestive caption
"Uns ist nichts zu heiss," meaning "We're not afraid of fire." One critic
pointed out that this was just a few days before the anniversary of
Kristallnacht.
Demonstrators had built a dungheap in front of the theater in ref–
erence to a line in the play that implied the whole country was a
dungheap. The over four-hour long performance was followed by forty
minutes of thundering applause, standing ovations, boos and whistles,
with the Austrian flag and banners unfolding from the balcony both in
support of and against Peymann, who bowed next to Bernhard. Al–
though it is customary for playwrights in Germany to take a bow after
an opening performance, this was the first time it had happened in Aus–
tria. To some, the two men, their hands clasped and held up high, ap–
peared like a triumphant pair of conquerors as the "Sieg Heil" choruses
on stage segued hauntingly into the warring choruses in the auditorium.
In its ironic ambivalence, the image was quintessentially Austrian. In the
end, the artists' victory manifested itself most seductively in the shrill
voices of the shrewdly manipulated crowd at their feet.
In view of the later Rushdie affair all of this might seem like
frivolous, if somewhat outlandish, histrionics. And indeed, all of Vienna,
in Peymann's brilliantly calculating
mise-en-scene,
seemed to act out the
kind of bizarre comedy that only Bernhard, whose works repeatedly
demonstrate how in Austria history was instantly turned into a perverse
operetta, could have invented. If his infamous attacks on Austria and
Austrians hadn't driven home his point, the Austrians' visceral response
