Just like in the Bladder Circus Company’s many previous pieces, the characters that appear here are almost the ‘same’ from performance to performance. They often take their requisites with them, just like real clowns. They are always the same, but always in different stories. Their state of mind can change, but their identity cannot. So are the maniac music clowns representing the members of the orchestra, and so is the diva, the singer arriving always in the last moment. Sometimes they are more like a synchronised noise-team. While we are all waiting for the Diva, a tragicomic musical ensemble performs this vibrant, nervous opera, a cross-over between circus atmosphere and grotesque tragedy.The conductor bound to the pendulum of a man-sized metronome, directs his unusual orchestra. The pendulum sometimes oscillates suddenly, in directions which we would expect the least. The first part of the play is constructed in rondo form and takes place in the orchestra pit. Then comes a long pause which is in fact the score-like performance of silence and incidental noises. The second part reminds us rather of a fugue, but it is more like the original meaning of the fugue, which is running and chasing, accompanied by Thomas Bernhard’s usual hatred-arias.

’Art and everything that goes with it is basically an enormous nerve tension.’ (Thomas Bernhard)-