Am Ziel

Am Ziel is a play by Austrian playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard, written in 1981 and first performed in the same year at the Salzburger Festspiele.

Plot synopsis

The play is set in the Netherlands. An elderly mother lives in a city apartment with her daughter. She is the widow of a once successful foundry owner. For several decades, the mother and the daughter have made the same journey every summer, traveling from the city to their sea-side house in Katwijk. The first act of the play describes the back story of the characters, but also reveals that, unusually, this year the pair have asked a young playwright to join them on their sea-side retreat. The second act, set in their summer house on the coast, reveals a rising tension in the relationship between the mother and the daughter, who has taken a fancy to the young intellectual.

Metatheatricality

Like Bernhard's 1984 play Der Theatermacher, Am Ziel comments on the art form of theatre itself, most notably through the inclusion of the character of the young playwright, and the views the character of the mother voices of his work and the art form in general.

Dramatis personae and character analysis

Am Ziel is a play for three actors, two female and one male, and with a small non-speaking servant role. All characters remain nameless throughout the play.

• The mother is representative of the past, and of the old bourgeoisie.
• The daughter is representative of a future that still remains in a self-imposed immaturity.
• The playwright represents pointless success because, although his play is applauded, although he triumphed in the virtual world of the theatre, his work does not matter in the real world.

Although the play's title translates as "At the Destination", in reality all three characters are not at their destination: the daughter can not get rid of the pathological relationship with her mother, the writer can not begin a relationship with the daughter and the mother can not escape from her past. Bernhard leaves open whether it is possible for the daughter and the writer to free themselves from their own immaturity.

Production and Publication History

Am Ziel was first performed on 18 August 1981 at Salzburger Festspielen with Marianne Hoppe in the lead role, directed by Claus Peymann. The German premiere of the play took place on 22 October 1981 at Bochum, directed, again, by Peymann.^[1] The play was translated to English by Jan-Willem Van Den Bosch and performed by Volcano Theatre Company directed by Kathryn Hunter. A BBC Radio production was adapted by Stephen Jeffreys and starred Geraldine McEwan as the mother, Imelda Staunton as the daughter, and Julian Rhind-Tutt as the writer.^[2] The play was first published in German in the October 1981 edition of Theater Heute.^[3]