JEDERMANN

About the show

Hugo von Hofmannsthal has fascinated me for a long time. I consider him to be the conscious and unconscious master of the Zeitgeist – and I use the Freudian terminology with care – who, even when setting his works in the past, was always connected to social, psychological and political developments in the present. Jedermann is certainly the most universal and the most culturally popular of his works. The play is based on the 15th-century Dutch and 16th-century English medieval morality plays of the same title, and so forms part of a long tradition. These plays deal with the one great mystery that we will all have to face: death. As human beings, however, it is not in our DNA to really apprehend the fact of our own death. For most of us, death is something that happens to other people. And when death does come, as come it must, it will always be too soon. But why is that so, and, in holding on to life, what exactly is it that we are holding on to so desperately? Jedermann explores all that, and more. Its power and resonance come from the fact that, however codified the telling of the story may be, its subject matter concerns every single audience member, in every performance, every year. There are not many plays for which this can be said. Max Reinhardt’s idea that the play should be performed in the heart of the city, in front of Salzburg Cathedral, is an idea full of resonance, but also full of joy. We must not lose sight of the fact that although the play concerns the sacred, it is not sacred in itself, and I do not think either Hofmannsthal or Reinhardt wanted it to be approached as such. It is a celebration of life through an acceptance of death, like a christening and a funeral rolled into one. It is in itself a precis, a metaphor and an allegory of life.