Poured clean: “The affair Rue de Lourcine” in the Munich Residenztheater

Created: 11/21/2022, 8:52 am

By: Michael Schleicher

Raise the cups!

Lenglumé (Thomas Lettow, Mi.) and his drinking buddy Mistingue (Michael Wächter) leave no stone unturned to counteract their hangover.

Watched here by Norine (Mareike Beykirch).

© Sandra Then/Munich Residenztheater

The Munich Residenz Theater shows "The Affair Rue de Lourcine".

András Dömötör directed the comedy about a film tear.

Our premiere review:

A theater evening like a strong schnapps: short, crisp, bangs well.

It's a nice tradition that the Staatstheater also descends onto the boulevard at the end of the year.

András Dömötör has now staged "Die Affaire Rue de Lourcine" for the Munich Residenztheater - as wild, abysmal fun, which celebrated its premiere on Friday (November 18, 2022) to much applause.

Munich Residenz Theater: a tabloid comedy at the end of the year

The salon comedy by Eugène Labiche (1815-1888) premiered in 1857 and is also a commentary on the Parisian theater of the time.

Dömötör and his dramaturge Katrin Michaels have skilfully brought the text up to date at key points - and deliberately left it in 19th-century France at other points.

So the servant Justin is a nanny whose real name is Anita and comes from Hungary.

Lenglumé's wife Norine wants to meet her in a fair and politically correct manner - and in doing so exposes her own arrogance and racism.

If the employee speaks or thinks Hungarian, she is given a surtitle – since her employer (“Supertitle?! And that in my apartment!”) finds the font old-fashioned, the technology quickly changes it to sans serif typography.

The Rue de Lourcine Affair premiered in 1857

Even in the original, "The Rue de Lourcine Affair" presents the theater as a theater - that's still funny.

Above all, however, the story is told here of how Lenglumé, a well-to-do citizen, wakes up after a drunken night next to a stranger with whom he is now painstakingly reconstructing the hours that have passed.

Both are soon convinced that they have murdered a charcoal girl while drunk - and from then on they do everything to cover up this crime.

Of course, this is wild madness, which Dömötör has staged with a bang and briskly.

Sigi Colpe built the apartment of Lenglumé and his wife on the stage as a bright room, money is not an issue here, possibilities for stepping on and off left and right ensure the best clip-and-click theater conditions, as you know them from tabloid comedies.

Only Lenglumé's memory gap keeps getting in the way as a booth made of black rubber bands.

The ensemble keeps up with the high tempo in the Residenztheater

The five-piece ensemble keeps up the high tempo;

a few timing imperfections will kick in as the game progresses.

Thomas Lettow as Lenglumé and Michael Wächter, who plays his drunk brother Mistingue, charge wonderfully funny and turn the crazy screw with great physical effort and a lot of facial acrobatics.

High-percentage high-speed.

For Norine and Justin/the Hungarian nanny, Labiche's template doesn't deliver as much as the male roles.

But Mareike Beykirch in the role of the wife distills enough humor and emancipation potential for her character from this fact, as does Barbara Horvath, who gives her domestic servant more than a dry exit.

However, “The Rue de Lourcine Affair” is not just lurid fun, it also shows what lies dormant deep within us.

"My God, I'm a monster," Lenglumé states - and never seems to question the statement.

The director consequently sends him into the basement of his soul: Lettow rushes through the understage and theater catacombs, followed by cameraman Christoph Karstens.

Dömötör shows this abysmal nightmare, in which Lenglumé and Mistingue believe they have to get rid of witnesses, with nice borrowings from horror and splatter cinema.

In the end, so much can be revealed, apparently only the cat got it.

Or was it a fat hangover?

(Even more theater: Read our reviews of "Pussy Sludge" at the Munich Volkstheater and "Waiting for Platonow" at the Munich Residenztheater here.)