Tales from the Vienna Woods (Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald)
by Ödön von Hórvath
"Nothing conveys the feeling of infinity as much as stupidity."
The people who run the butcher shop, the toy store and the tobacconist’s go about their daily lives. Their crises – whether personal, social or economic – are there to stay, they feel. Oskar the butcher has long had an eye on Marianne, whose father owns the toy store. But Marianne is attracted to the perpetually penniless Alfred, who’s having an affair with Valerie, the widow from the tobacco shop. Marianne’s father promises Oskar his daughter’s hand in marriage, but Marianne begin an affair with Alfred and breaks off the engagement. Valerie consoles herself with the dumb Nazi student Erich. After Marianne bears Alfred’s child, he quickly loses interest in her and their relationship falls apart. The child is raised by Alfred’s mother and grandmother in the countryside. And Marianne, rejected by her father, struggles to get by as a nightclub dancer.
Horvath’s “Tales from the Vienna Woods” celebrated its world premiere on November 2, 1931 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Set during the era of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, the play reveals the darkness lurking behind society‘s false sentimentality.
The people who run the butcher shop, the toy store and the tobacconist’s go about their daily lives. Their crises – whether personal, social or economic – are there to stay, they feel. Oskar the butcher has long had an eye on Marianne, whose father owns the toy store. But Marianne is attracted to the perpetually penniless Alfred, who’s having an affair with Valerie, the widow from the tobacco shop. Marianne’s father promises Oskar his daughter’s hand in marriage, but Marianne begin an affair with Alfred and breaks off the engagement. Valerie consoles herself with the dumb Nazi student Erich. After Marianne bears Alfred’s child, he quickly loses interest in her and their relationship falls apart. The child is raised by Alfred’s mother and grandmother in the countryside. And Marianne, rejected by her father, struggles to get by as a nightclub dancer.
Horvath’s “Tales from the Vienna Woods” celebrated its world premiere on November 2, 1931 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Set during the era of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, the play reveals the darkness lurking behind society‘s false sentimentality.
Premiere March 29, 2013
Katrin WichmannMarianne
Andreas DöhlerAlfred
Almut ZilcherValerie
Michael GerberKing of Magic
Peter MoltzenOskar
Barbara SchnitzlerThe mother
Simone von ZglinickiThe grandmother
Moritz GroveEric
Harald Baumgartnercavalry captain
Henning VogtHavlitschek
Jürgen HuthThe Mister
Georgia LautnerIda
Marianne
Alfred
Valerie
King of Magic
Oskar
The mother
The grandmother
Eric
cavalry captain
Havlitschek
The Mister
Ida
The way Wichmann and Döhler, two of our favourite actors in the DT ensemble, play this love and its downfall is a small sensation, particularly touching in its reserve. Döhler doesn’t depict the ne’er do well in his cheap suit as a shooting gallery figure, but as an imperturbable survivor. Wichmann sentimentalises neither the moment of falling in love with romantic spasms nor the humiliation of its decline with self-pity, instead registering them almost impersonally: that’s simply the way her life is going. Even Moltzen, as the butcher, whose complete brutalisation virtually invites caricature, and Almut Zilcher as Valerie, the kiosk owner and lower-middle-class vamp with a string of men behind her, maintain a fine balance and don’t take the easy path of denouncing their characters. Thalheimer recounts a tragedy, but with such a fine and nuanced touch that a lovely lightness to the acting emerges and even moments of laconic comedy. (…) Thalheimer creates great art this evening. (…) Thalheimer delves into people, albeit brutalised, damaged, psychologically crippled people during the interwar period. What accounts for the striking stature of this production is the fact that he doesn’t derisively portray that damage as a caricature of middle-class complacency with the self-righteousness of a later generation, but instead illuminates it objectively with the greatest possible sobriety. Here Thalheimer, usually a director who favours brutal images and expressive exaggeration, derives pathetic horror from the brutality of the facts. This production seems to say, free of illusions, ‘That’s the way people are.’ (…)
The way Wichmann and Döhler, two of our favourite actors in the DT ensemble, play this love and its downfall is a small sensation, particularly touching in its reserve. Döhler doesn’t depict the ne’er do well in his cheap suit as a shooting gallery figure, but as an imperturbable survivor. Wichmann sentimentalises neither the moment of falling in love with romantic spasms nor the humiliation of its decline with self-pity, instead registering them almost impersonally: that’s simply the way her life is going. Even Moltzen, as the butcher, whose complete brutalisation virtually invites caricature, and Almut Zilcher as Valerie, the kiosk owner and lower-middle-class vamp with a string of men behind her, maintain a fine balance and don’t take the easy path of denouncing their characters.
Almut Zilcher’s Valerie superbly personifies the kind of woman who, in every situation, is a little too loud, too vulgar and ultimately too soft-hearted –and whose shrill and embarrassing performance simply covers up her utter disappointment in life. Andreas Döhler’s perfectly-judged, lackadaisical Alfred (…) displays his brutal insignificance so skilfully that he seems actually tobelieve his own boundless self-pity. The barking barracks-room voice of MichaelGerber’s Zauberkönig, Marianne’s father, breaks almost pitifully in the end.And the way Katrin Wichmann’s Marianne strips, taking off her bra in a cheapshower of gold while singing tunelessly and weakly, is nearly unbearable in itsbrutal precision and bleakness. Over two hours without an interval, Michael Thalheimer and his first-class ensemble carve out one miniature tragedy after another from Ödon von Horváth’s Tales from the Vienna Woods. The fact that these individual dramas start out with near comedy sharpens the tragedy of their outcomes all the more. (...) Thalheimer’s consistency in staging this ‘folk play’ in an empty space, with almost no resort to technical effects (the programme actually lists no set designer), leaves the performers no place to hide. And they don’t need any. The way they master the interplay between stylisation and individual tragedy, switch from abstract character sketches to the naturalistic and move from irony to the depths is simply magnificent.
Almut Zilcher’s Valerie superbly personifies the kind of woman who, in every situation, is a little too loud, too vulgar and ultimately too soft-hearted –and whose shrill and embarrassing performance simply covers up her utter disappointment in life. Andreas Döhler’s perfectly-judged, lackadaisical Alfred (…) displays his brutal insignificance so skilfully that he seems actually tobelieve his own boundless self-pity. The barking barracks-room voice of MichaelGerber’s Zauberkönig, Marianne’s father, breaks almost pitifully in the end.And the way Katrin Wichmann’s Marianne strips, taking off her bra in a cheapshower of gold while singing tunelessly and weakly, is nearly unbearable in itsbrutal precision and bleakness.
(…)
The gifted DT ensemble, which has recently so often been mere promise, is now all fulfilment, down to the smallest incidental role. They enter as clowns and exit as humans. The cardboard masks that Thalheimer has given them in their final scene still exude an amateurish honesty. (…) ‘Look at the stars – they’ll still hang up there when we’re deep under the earth,’ Marianne says, as she falls in love with Alfred and her downfall approaches. A line that speaks to eternity; theatrical veracity. It’s a long time since we’ve been down so deep, yet so near the stars. What a beginning! Somewhere at the back, in the deep, dark emptiness of the stage, shadowy figures crouch. But in the auditorium the light goes on, bit by bit, until the Deutsches Theater’s huge chandelier glows brightly. For a long, comic moment Michael Thalheimer remains poised on the threshold that seems to divide us from the chauvinistic, lower-middle-class milieu of Ödön von Horváth’s Tales from the Vienna Woods, the threshold between the world of the audience and that of the stage: here we are in the brightness, children of the sun, primed intellectually for the holiday premiere in the theatre where Horváth’s folk play celebrated its first premiere in 1931, and there they are in the dark: the unseen, Horváth’s coarse characters with their spewed-out suburban German and their musty visions of life. But then the light moves from the auditorium to the stage, and nothing is black and white anymore, nothing distinct. ‘A man has light and dark sides: that’s normal,’ says the devious dandy Alfred. And this evening Thalheimer will penetrate them all, down to the last nuance, both the dark and the light sides. I, at least, cannot remember an evening on which Thalheimer, the great discoverer of gravity in German directors’ theatre, has ever staged such a light, iridescent, comedic farandole.
(…)
The gifted DT ensemble, which has recently so often been mere promise, is now all fulfilment, down to the smallest incidental role. They enter as clowns and exit as humans. The cardboard masks that Thalheimer has given them in their final scene still exude an amateurish honesty. (…) ‘Look at the stars – they’ll still hang up there when we’re deep under the earth,’ Marianne says, as she falls in love with Alfred and her downfall approaches. A line that speaks to eternity; theatrical veracity. It’s a long time since we’ve been down so deep, yet so near the stars.