The Magic Mountain

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN by Thomas Mann

Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes - no intermission

Hans Castorp's visit to his lung-sick cousin in a Davos sanatorium is initially planned to last only three weeks. However, he soon learns to appreciate the detachment and peculiar timelessness of the thin air: "The forms of time blur, flow into each other, and what reveals itself as the true form of being is a dimensionless present in which they eternally bring you soup."

Seven years later, the thunderclap of World War I tears him from the "enchantment" of this luxurious refuge for an outdated European bourgeoisie and its quest for life enhancement in an "atmosphere of death and amusement." Just recently, he had dined with two Armenians, two Finns, an Uzbek Jew, and a Kurd at the "bad Russian table," and now he staggers into the trenches of Europe. This book of those seven pre-war years, which, like its protagonist, seemingly keeps a great distance from the events in the "flatlands," is, not least, a description of the "great irritability" that precedes this European and global conflagration.

Program and cast

Tilman Tuppy
Dagna Litzenberger Vinet
Markus Meyer
Sylvie Rohrer

Direction: Bastian Kraft
Set Design: Peter Baur
Costumes: Jelena Miletić
Music: Björn SC Deigner
Video: Sophie Lux
Lighting: Michael Hofer
Makeup for Video: Lena Damm
Dramaturgy: Sebastian Huber