Münchner Kammerspiele: Buy yourself happy with “Buy Hard”

Created: 04/24/2022, 14:17

By: Teresa Grenzmann

Münchner Kammerspiele: Gro Swantje Kohlhof and Bekim Latifi use “Buy Hard” to formulate a deeply ironic yet enthusiastic love letter to the theater as Cherybel Mustang and Uwe van Tiger.

© Nicole Wytyczak/Münchner Kammerspiele

Gro Swantje Kohlhof and her fellow actor Bekim Latifi brought the consumer satire “Buy Hard” to the workroom of the Munich Kammerspiele.

In her review of the premiere, our critic explains why the evening urgently needs to be put back on the schedule:

Gro Swantje Kohlhof's consumer satire "Buy Hard" has only been shown twice (so far) in the Werkraum of the Munich Kammerspiele - but that can perhaps change in view of the almost endlessly stormy final applause.

Because this evening is a small, slapstick dripping, deeply ironic and yet honestly enthusiastic love letter to the incomparably naively enchanting nature of the theater and all the theater beings in it.

Munich Kammerspiele: The evening is reminiscent of a TV shopping show

"Buy Hard" - that's the 1970s sales television show by the impeccably superficial hair dryer duo Cherybel Mustang and Uwe van Tiger.

This time it's the turn of the "Kammerspiele sell-out": The almost inexhaustible "Product Box of the Week" still bears the logo of the Johan Simons directorship, and once it's unpacked, the indiscriminate "Klimbim" robs dusty props as "representatives of theatrical spirit “ Even Cherybel and Uwe almost got on their nerves.

Buy Hard is a nonsense comedy wild card

"The whole concept is a bit too abstract for me," one dares to say when the cameras are off, and asks the all-important question: "Who needs that?" Yes: "Where is production done so pointlessly as in the theater?" A nonsense comedy wild card for the actors Gro Swantje Kohlhof, who can also be seen in “Jeeps” at the Kammerspiele, and so Bekim Latifi.

But an optimally used and through the interaction of Leonard Mandl (stage), Florian Buder, Mirjam Pleines (costumes) and Nicole Marianna Wytyczak (video) also an aesthetically exciting throw, whose ambiguous abysses not only lead to the oil slick under the Art Nouveau building.

The "act as if!" is equal parts the big smile and the big despair on Cherybel's and Uwe's show and private faces.

The theater's dilemma between illusion and market economy, completely innocent and slyly to the point.

(Interested in more theater? Read our reviews of the Kammerspiele premieres “Nightcore” and “Whoever hopes, dies singing” here.)