Die Toten

“His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.”

This is the state in which Gabriel Conroy – the main protagonist in the James Joyce’s short story, “The Dead” – finds himself after his wife has revealed to him that before their marriage she had a passionate affair with a young man, who subsequently died because of her. One of the themes of this project, which Barbara Frey has selected as the final production of her directorship at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, is the continued life of the dead among the living. The project is dedicated to James Joyce, who spent many years of his life in Zurich and also died here – a few days after a feast at the Restaurant Kronenhalle. Having risen from the dead, his ghost is about to conquer the stage of the Pfauen theatre. “The Dead” speak to us in many voices – an unbridled language that smoothly merges into music. The dead sing and dance, speaking of modest happiness and the narrow confines of life in Dublin, the city which, to Joyce, meant the world.