IT MIGHT not be quite up there with watching paint dry, but the monotony of the late Herbert Wernicke's operatic concoction of Bach cantatas for Stuttgart Opera was the overwhelming factor in this re-staging.
Sure, we all got it. Life is a routine cycle of ups and downs – mostly downs in the case of the full-size apartment block viewed impressively in four-storey cross-section, and housing its fair share of saddos.
They inhabit the same space, but they don't. We are voyeurs, much like James Stewart in Hitchcock's Rear Window. For him, though, things got exciting. For us, the eternal looping matrix of aphoristic traumas was clever at first, but after almost two hours became a yawning reminder that life's too short and there are better things to do on a Friday night. But at least we got useful tips on how to fold a shirt from the top-floor countertenor in Monty Python-style drag, who ironed throughout. Bach's music – averagely played and variably sung – got dragged into the gutter with it, where it simply doesn't belong. That was the tragic act.
