Heiner Müller's >Quartet< with >The Razor< by Annie Hsieh

Drawing room before the French Revolution.
Air raid shelter after World War III.
A collision of classical music and contemporary theatre.

Heiner Müller's Quartet (after Laclos Les Liaisons Dangereuses)
Annie Hsieh’s The Razor (after Haydn String Quartet in F min Op.55 No.2)

Heiner Müller’s ardently acclaimed and oft criticised Quartet (1981) is a refraction of Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangeureuses in contemplation on the end of humanity. Quartet revels in the decadence and degradation of Liaisons, taking both to dripping modernist heights, as Laclos’ two protagonists switch characters and sexes (enacting also the president’s wife and Merteuil’s virgin niece) in a roleplay of boundless fetish and the ruination of virtue.

Müller’s reduction of four into two is ultimately an expansion: the variations of alternate persona revealing hitherto unrecognised possibilities of character. It takes but two to tango. Working from Haydn’s string quartet in F minor Op.55 no.2 (“The Razor”) to create a musical parallel, composer Annie Hsieh has penned an enervating composition, which (as Müller departed from Laclos) carries with it the original in the face of two fewer players, and rejoices in the ensuing performative possibilities.

As these lines converge and intersect, two duos perform a double quartet: a rare performance of possibility and indulgence.

"eye-catchingly impressive" – Alison Croggon, theatre notes

“the most elegant sixty-odd minutes of theatre seen this year” – Neandellus

“compelling production” – Herald Sun

“stage design by Grant Cooper is, simply, stunning” – Theatre People

“Composer Annie Hsieh…complements the dramatic action perfectly” – Cameron Woodhead, The Age

“Colman’s direction is alive to Müller’s poetry” – The Age

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