Lo stimolatore cardiaco, Theater Basel

We see a sterile foyer. Staircases bisect the space, leading past frosted glass doors to nowhere.

What implies offstage drama better than a hospital corridor? Christoph Marthaler’s Lo stimolatore cardiaco (The Pacemaker ) dismantles the music of Giuseppe Verdi as it meanders through a series of reflections on human frailty and passion. Women in neat 1950s hats and coats pause on the staircase to intone passages from Verdi’s “Ave Maria”. A man in a suit, his hands clutching his head in a pantomime of despair, sings Iago’s “Credo”. The music ties itself into endlessly repeating loops or stalls on a particular phrase.

Marthaler, abetted by two conductors and a dramaturg, snatches tufts of Verdi from Otello, from Luisa Miller, from Traviata, Falstaff and Trovatore. While the chorus sings the storm scene from Otello, surgeons in hospital green perform a postmortem on a swordfish. When the Moor requests a last kiss from an unresponsive Desdemona on the stairs, his phrase is taken up by a second woman, then others; an unorthodox love rectangle plays “catch” with Verdi’s notes until repetition robs them of meaning. What are these people doing here? Who are the patients?

Lo stimolatore cardiaco occupies the knife-edge space between pathos and absurdity. Through two hours of music, slapstick, monologue, repetition and allusion Marthaler guides his performers and his audience on a one-way trip towards final darkness. Two overall-clad workers carry a piano doggedly up the stairs and back down, staggering from scene to scene in a labour so predictably pointless that you could scream. An actor repeats phrases from Toscanini’s famous rehearsal tantrums. Cast members fight a losing battle to stop themselves singing along with Falstaff. Melodies are remembered, fragmented, dismantled. At the end of the evening, the only ones left are conductors Bendix Dethleffsen and Giuliano Betta, picking out a handful of notes on a virginal in the gloom. The light fails, the music stutters to a halt. No heart beats forever.

Marthaler is profound, inane, revelatory, touching and maddeningly childish in turn. His cast responds with discipline and wit. Lo stimolatore cardiaco is a lovingly crafted homage to Verdi for those who thrive on bizarre association. Little is left intact. Viewers would be well advised not to abstain from alcohol before and not to operate heavy machinery after this performance.

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