Olga Neuwirth

The black widow and the farmer’s son thrown off track by an addiction to steroids often hold forth on their views, insights and the absurdities of life. Every now and then, however, the simul-taneous utterance of text and the very complexity of their relationship create the impression of their having a real conver-sation. The texts are taken from Elfriede Jelinek’s Sportstück, who takes a cynical look at two “favorite sports” of the apparent interlocutors: The woman tells about nursing retirees to death, and the boy about his desperately failed attempts to emulate his bodybuilding idol Schwarzenegger. Arranging the texts, Neuwirth allowed them to partially overlap, and then used her music to solder together the different sections. As a result, her new radio drama contains quotations from unusual folk music as well as electronic sounds and distorted samples. The recital of text is being “interrupted by and overlaid with instrumental and electronic sounds.” (Bernhard Günther) Text and music perfectly interlock with each other in this piece. It can be considered, without any exaggeration, one of the best radio dramas/plays in the history of the genre – and this also is, to no small extent, due to Marianne Hoppe who gives an arresting performance as the old woman.