It’s Christmas Eve. The Kosovo war atrocities spill over into the deer house ("das Hirschhaus"). The way a central European family deals with death and survives is depicted by the Belgian performance artist Jan Lauwers and his Needcompany in the premiere of "the Deer House". The drama, written specially for the Salzburg Festival, is the final part of his trilogy "Sad Face/Happy Face", following "Isabella’s Room" and "The Lobster Shop". All three can be seen on Perner Island. The title is a pun on the English words "deer" and "dear". In the remote deer house a family breeds deer for their antlers, watched over by the matriarch (the splendid Viviane de Muynck). Deer disappear, others come. The brother of Needcomany dancer Tijen Lawton was shot in Kosovo in 2001 while working as a war photographer. This is the real-life starting point. The war reporter brings the family the daughter’s/sister’s body – after having been forced to murder her. He pays for the murder with his own life, but his avengers fall victim of family justice. "Life always means destruction", says the mother. The dead – including the corpses in the cellar – mix with the living in the fairy-tale grotesque disputes, games, dances and songs of the Needcompany family, to a background of rubber deer torsos continually needing to be restacked. The imbecile Grace (performed marvellously by Grace Ellen Barkey) as custodian and saviour of the deer once again puts a stop to the apocalypse. One has just managed to survive; life triumphs over death – but death remains lurking in the background.