As of: February 13, 2024, 9:13 a.m
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Entertaining country game between two silo towers: André Benndorff in “Land”.
© Maurice Korbel/Münchner Kammerspiele
“Land” is the title of the surprisingly funny rustic revue by Christoph Frick and Lothar Kittstein.
The Bavarian Schollen saga has now premiered at the Munich Kammerspiele.
Even if it wasn't planned - it fits with the recent farmers' protests that "land" is now in sight in the Munich Kammerspiele: two silo towers rise in the foreground, there are a few atmospheric bales of straw in between, and there is a calf box on the right.
Brass music and the robust rattling of a Fendt bulldog can be heard from the loudspeakers, farmers' wives with headscarves and aprons grumble around, Lenor advertising from the 1970s can be seen on the color television and Federal President Heinemann is indulging in the authorities' favorite game: he calls for renunciation and restrictions.
“Land” at the Munich Kammerspiele is enjoyable actor theater
But even if the Kammerspiele are now coming to us with peasant theater: of course you shouldn't expect the smell of manure and filth in a germ-free art place.
However, at least a hint of comedy blows through the Therese-Giehse-Halle at the premiere of “Land”.
Because this sometimes surprisingly funny rustic revue by Christoph Frick and Lothar Kittstein is not about a sold grandfather, but rather about purchasable genetic tinkerers and “future food”.
Among other things.
The commissioned work crossfades different time levels and is also about the famine of 1816, triggered by a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, whose ash clouds reduced solar radiation around the globe.
It also takes place in 1973, when the oil crisis drives farmers to bankruptcy and suicide, while their children roam around Schwabing as hippies.
The episodes are connected by the fact that they all take place on a remote farm in the Dachau hinterland (“just before Triefing, take the dirt road on the right”), each of which is farmed (or torched) by a different generation of the same family.
Right down to the youngest heiress, who is currently running a start-up for GM millet - before that too falls victim to a flood.
“Land” brings back memories of “Peasants Die” by Franz Xaver Kroetz
Ultimately, the authors plow through the old material about man's archetypal struggle with nature, from which he wrests his nourishment.
Such a return to the mythical and fateful is just as surprising as the fact that a “well-made play” comes onto the stage.
Christoph Frick stages the Bavarian plaice saga as a pleasant actor's theater that, with a wink, plows along between bitter fairytale idyll and picturesque agricultural realism until the furrow cracks.
Martin Weigel, for example, is the virile countryman with rubber boots and suspenders who nevertheless fails because of higher powers.
André Benndorff plays the enigmatic Uncle Georg in a pretty Mephistophelian manner, but at the same time he also plays “the universe” and finally the “last pig” that is slaughtered.
But Traute Hoess provides the absolute highlights as a clever old backwoodswoman with a hunting shotgun at the ready.
Of course, a big shadow looms behind this entertaining country outing: almost 40 years ago, the Kammerspiele caused a historical scandal with the premiere of Franz Xaver Kroetz's rough grotesque "Peasants Die", which looks at the fate of small farmers from a class perspective .
You won't find such political awareness in Frick and Kittstein.
They do what is always very popular when it comes to distracting from the question of power relations and economic interests: They tell us the myth of the natural, which of course has no alternative.
Enthusiastic applause.
Alexander Altman