"Journey to the Crystal Palace": Magic on the Kurhaus ceiling

Created: 01/15/2023, 19:00

By: Andreas Steppan

There was a lot to see in the show “Journey to the Crystal Palace”.

While lighting designer Flo Beyer conjured up imaginative beings on the ceiling, Axel Berger was busy on stage with glow sticks.

© Arndt Pröhl

The Tölz Kurhaus was transformed into a “crystal palace” on Friday and Saturday.

Musicians, artists, puppeteers, actors and light designers combined their arts into a fairytale whole.

Bad Tölz – A soap bubble rain from the ceiling above the spectators finally completed the fairytale atmosphere: For an hour and a half, numerous participants in the show “Journey to the Crystal Palace” had previously transformed the Tölz Kurhaus into a fabulous world full of strange creatures and amazing events.

In three full performances in the Kurhaus - the first of which was offered free of charge for volunteers - on Friday and Saturday, musicians, acrobats, marionette players and light artists showed the wide range of artistic potential that the region offers in an entertaining way.

In the fully occupied Kurhaus, Mayor Ingo Mehner welcomed volunteers to the premiere.

© Arndt Pröhl

The aim is to stage the venerable Kurhaus in a way that people have never seen: This is what Gaißacher Axel Berger, together with his wife Simone Heitinga the initiator and author of the play, had announced.

And indeed: the ensemble used and designed the space in a way that is otherwise not experienced.

A steel truss stretched under the hall ceiling - it served as a suspension point for aerial acrobatics acts by the "Cirque de Soleil" soloist Heitinga and the acrobat Renske Endel from Holland.

On the stage, the actors moved on a turntable, a stage bridge led between the rows of chairs.

Aerial acrobatics, live music and light design at the fairy tale show in the Kurhaus

The greatest visual transformation, however, was provided by the light projections by Flo Beyer and his team, who not only conjured up a starry sky, rain and lightning in the vault, but also fantastic creatures or the likeness of the sorceress Desdemona, played by Sabine Maiß, who used her gestures to express her magic - if not as a video projection, then also in person from the balcony.

All this formed a colorful framework for the most diverse forms of representation.

In terms of classic acting, Sabine Maiß had the most opportunity to shine.

Above all, the malicious-jealous song "How she walks, how she dances, how she laughs" was a worth seeing and amusing showpiece in gestures and facial expressions.

With her numbers, Simone Heitinga elegantly claimed sovereignty over the heads of the audience.

The puppeteers Albert Maly-Motta and Karlheinz Bille from the Tölz Marionette Theater later took up their flowing movements in a short performance with the specially created wooden “Rose Queen” and provided a particularly poetic moment on stage in its reducedness.

Axel Berger and Sabine Maiß played the leading roles as Celsius and the witch Desdemona.

© Arndt Pröhl

Renske Endel was amazed not only by her mobility but also by her elaborate and imaginative costumes.

As the gnarly narrator and main character, Axel Berger in the role of Celsius held the individual numbers together with a background story and was responsible for the spectacular finale with a fire show.

"Double Drums" and Sebastian Schwarzenberger convince

The musicians performed at the highest level in the "Crystal Palace".

The two percussionists from "Double Drums" and the Lenggrieser guitarist Sebastian Schwarzenberger kept up the tension in the number revue with their atmospheric compositions and also over some rather text-heavy passages.

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The art forms were so varied that each individual actor could have been given a little more room to develop.

Still, there was never a feeling that the story of Celsius traveling from Misty Mountain to the Crystal Palace to pay off an old debt was just a pretext to showcase the individual artists as effectively as possible.

Rather, the numbers were subordinate to the plot.

It would have been nice to have followed it a little longer after it was built up with a relatively large amount of explanation.

You can find more current news from the region around Bad Tölz at Merkur.de/Bad Tölz.