Elevator Repair Service return to Vienna with their beautifully disparate and dream like stage version of Faulkner´s novel. It vividly charts the decline of the old American South with the cult company’s trademark physicality. More

By narrating the story of the Compson family, the novel paints a picture of the decline of the Old South and its traditions. There are three Compson brothers – one has committed suicide, one is retarded, and the third hates everybody else –; there is one sister who marries a rich man, is divorced by her husband, prostitutes herself; there is her daughter conceived out of wedlock, who runs off with the last remnants of the family money; there are the depressive mother and terminally alcoholic father; and there are Dilsey, the cook, and her children. “These others were not Compsons. They were black.” The first section of the novel is told from the perspective of feebleminded Benjy.

The production by Manhattan-based theatre ensemble Elevator Repair Service focuses on the disjointed language of these disparate and intensive perceptions. Without explanation or judgment, in wild, almost dreamlike leaps, events pertaining to different time periods become the common present of both all family members and the blacks, who remain on the stage even after death. This choreography of a specific landscape and era is created by the performers with a vital, extraordinary body language and with supreme linguistic and musical precision. It speaks of the despair and inherent comicality of a dying culture, of dying elites and the changing tides of prosperity without sentimentality, with an idiot’s innocence. Elevator Repair Service is one of the most important ensembles of New York’s off-Broadway scene.

For interested patrons we recommand to read William Faulkner’s novel.