The Salzburg Festival is turning back the clocks: Jan Lauwers and his Needcompany with their production "Das Hirschhaus" ("The Deer House"). Greek theatre, writes Ismail Kadaré in an essay on Aeschylus, was born at the side of a grave. Its original function was to bring together the surviving members of the family for the funeral celebrations. In their latest production which had its premiere at the Salzburg Festival on Perner Island in Hallein, the Flemish multimedia artist Jan Lauwers and his Needcompany take this literally. "Das Hirschhaus" represents the company’s reflection on a case of death in its own ranks: the dancer Tijen Lawton lost her brother in 2001, killed while working as a war photographer in Kosovo. His diary remained. "Needcompany productions are like a party of minor acquaintances, watched from an adjoining room", wrote dramatologist Hans-Thies Lehmann about Lauwers. You spend "an evening at (not with) Jan and his friends". The confident, natural, at-home feeling evoked by the acting, dancing and singing performers seemed to give the theoretician of the "post-dramatic theatre" an authenticity that can only be feigned by classical actors trying hard to slip into the roles of other characters. What would such an authenticity in the face of such extreme shock – viz. Tijen Lawton in her role as "Tijen" - look like on the stage, one asks oneself with a certain trepidation? The performance began with a coup, which at first seemed to be stage-managed. Jan Lauwers, 51 years old and with ice-grey hair, stepped up in front of the audience to make the statement that the dancer Anneke Bonnema had hurt her back, had to wear a corset and must remain in a lying position. It had been decided that the show must go on. But no, that was no cynical fake. Lauwers’ cynical phase is long past. Anneke Bonnema in her role as "Anneke", but even more as a woman in pain, was to be seen lying on a stretcher on the stage. In the same way, "Tijen’s" grief was expressed in her body. And it was so touching to see how the members of Lauwers’ family, and especially "Tijen", continually managed to include "Anneke", smiling at her or tenderly stroking her. This was a partial reconciliation for the performance’s literary pretensions and constructedness. Lauwers starts the performance backstage, with the Needcompany on tour and all actors at ease in Adidas shorts or lingerie. This makes way for blithesome travesty, with rubber ears stuck on and a whole herd of rubber deer (more a tribute to Walt Disney than to the Salzkammergut). "Tijen" then reads out of her brother’s diary ("some dead are deader than others") and the performance slowly drifts into a family massacre fairy-tale, striving to be on a par with Aeschylus’ Atrides. The war photographer becomes involved in the civil war, is forced to shoot a young mother (he has to decide whether to save her life or that of her daughter), brings back the beautiful naked corpse to the large matriarch-ruled Kosovo family (Viviane de Muynck as the matriarch) who live in a hunting lodge in the mountains breeding deer, only to be murdered by a son-in-law. The most touching scene is where the matriarch mother and her mentally retarded daughter (brilliantly performed by Grace Ellen Barkey) try to dress the corpse. At the end there are three bodies laid out on an Ekkyklema, a small stage fitting for such a tragedy. Then comes the final resurrection scene, worthy of a musical, celebrating life without cynicism and with song and dance: „We are small people with a big heart ... We love each other and it’s a real art.“ Anneke Bonnema, with a faint smile on her face, took the heart-felt applause seated in a wheelchair. In the coming days she has to sing "das Leiden annehmen" in Andrea Breth’s production of Dostoyevsky’s "Crime and Punishment" ("Verbrechen und Strafe") lying down. She also has roles in "Isabella’s room" and "The Lobster Shop", which are being shown in conjunction with "Das Hirschhaus" ("The Deer House") until 5. August. This is by the way a unique chance for Lauwers fans to see all three parts of the trilogy "Sad Face/Happy Face". There won’t be another festival in the near future in a position to stage it.