Offending (October)

Only at university, nearer October than March, could one get involved in a production of Peter Handke’s ‘Offending the Audience’ (‘Publikumsbeschimpfung’) that eschewed the original austere directions. Actors delivered lines in varieties of voice, mocked styles of blocking, and played Berlioz at earthquake levels. There are no parts, it is one long screed attacking the staid pretensions of German theatre-going in the sixties. But offending the director and cast is equally possible, with dismissive reviews and the wife of one well-known Melbourne theatrical declaring loudly after the final lines, “Well, we could have spent an hour more productively than this!”