German Language

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares129 Views

    Review: ‘Hamilton’ in German? It’s a Thrill.

    by

    The hit musical arrived in Hamburg with its verve, ingenuity and idealism intact. And it gains unexpected depth from being staged in Germany.HAMBURG, Germany — Early on in “Hamilton,” Aaron Burr offers the founding father of the title some “free advice”: “Talk less. Smile more.”In the German-language premiere of the blockbuster musical that opened here on Thursday, that line is one of the few retained in English — and a flummoxed Hamilton immediately asks what those words mean.There’s a slinking, mischievous irony to Burr’s advice. This is one of the wordiest musicals in the history of theater, a show so drunk on the exuberance of its language that it almost never stops to catch its breath. As much as it is a musical tour de force, “Hamilton” is a love letter to the English language’s tonal richness and malleability. So, when Hamilton prompts Burr for a translation in this early exchange, it teasingly registers as a meta-commentary on the artistic challenges facing the production — and as both a taunt and a dare.The “Hamilton” cast in Hamburg comes from 13 countries, including Brazil, the Philippines and the United States.Johan PerssonEver since a German-language version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer and Tony-winning “Hamilton” was announced, a number of urgent questions have swirled about. How, in God’s name, could this, of all musicals, convince in German, a language with a vastly different syntax and repertoire of sounds? In a theater landscape that lacks diversity, where would producers find the mammoth multiracial cast the show requires? And why should German audiences even care about the story of an American founding father whose likeness on the $10 bill most here would not even recognize?A lot could have gone wrong. So I’m pleased to report that “Hamilton” has transferred to Hamburg with its verve, ingenuity, idealism and courage intact. The show here is every bit as electrifying as the one currently running on Broadway, and it gains unexpected depth from being performed in Germany, and auf Deutsch.Perhaps most fundamentally, this “Hamilton” is a masterpiece of translation. The translating team of Kevin Schroeder and Sera Finale spent four years working on the German version of Miranda’s densely wordy and rhythmically propulsive lyrics. (In the end, Miranda vetted the final version of each line himself). The result is some of the most vivid, fresh-faced and dynamic German I’ve heard in the theater in a long time. Schroeder and Finale approached their herculean assignment with unstinting resourcefulness and shrewd musical instinct.The punning, exuberant text results in a genuinely German version, a “Hamilton” eminently, entirely at home in the language. Nearly every word in translation rings true.This makes it possible for the large cast to convincingly inhabit both show’s musical landscape — with its mix of hip hop, R&B, pop and show tunes — as well as its inner world. Although David Korins’s brick-and-wood set is identical to the one used in the six English-language productions, directed by Thomas Kail and currently running worldwide, the performers succeed in making it their own. Indeed, the German cast seems to rejuvenate the 7-year-old show, whose haunting lighting by Howell Binkley, frequently stage rotations and energetic, near-constant dancing (Andy Blankenbuehler’s Tony Award-winning choreography) mirror the torrid flow of language.Gino Emnes, center, as Aaron Burr.Johan PerssonCasting “Hamilton” in German was nearly as difficult as translating it, and the talent scouts at Stage Entertainment, the show’s producer in Hamburg, have assembled an impressive cast whose members hail from 13 countries. The Broadway-caliber performers bring the requisite bluster, lyricism and wit to their assignments. And they all get that, fundamentally, “Hamilton” is a show about collective energy and cooperation — the hard work of democracy — rather than showboating.Benet Monteiro, who is from Brazil, plays Hamilton with wiry, coiled-up energy. He’s a man constantly overheated, which is what makes him tick, and is his tragic flaw. Gino Emnes, who is Dutch, is charismatic and elegant as Burr. Daniel Dodd-Ellis, an American, does double duty as Lafayette (with an outrageous French accent) and Jefferson. Another American, Charles Simmons, cut a striking figure as Washington.The late 18th-century America of “Hamilton” is very much a guy’s world, but the show has a trio of finely drawn female characters, sung here by the lyrically accomplished Berlin-born Ivy Quainoo (as Eliza Hamilton), the American-born Chasity Crisp (Angelica Schuyler) and the Filipino-Swiss actress Mae Ann Jorolan (as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds).If the translation is a rare artistic accomplishment, this casting feels like a milestone in this country. Theaters throughout the German-speaking world — both commercial theaters and the publicly funded playhouses common throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland — have not made the push for onstage diversity that companies in the United States and Britain have. And these countries are as not as ethnically homogeneous as they are often taken for; indeed, they are all becoming less white and more diverse. Even so, the theater scene here has been slow to adapt to reflect this emerging demographic reality. With few exceptions, the huge theater scene here remains overwhelmingly white and native-born.Charles Simmons, center, in the role of Washington.Johan Persson“Hamilton” in Germany takes on a different charge than it does in today’s America. To see the Broadway show is to be transported to a prelapsarian time before the wreckage of the Trump years, the murder of George Floyd and the Capitol Hill insurrection. In a painfully divided country, “Hamilton” can feel like a quaint artifact from a simpler time, an encapsulation of the hope, however naïve, for a colorblind society that celebrated individuality, difference and the contribution of immigrants.Sitting through the show in Hamburg, my impressions were different. Although the history in “Hamilton” is not Germany’s own, it leaped off the stage with force, immediacy and clarity. Who cares if local audiences only have a passing knowledge of the Federalist Papers or can’t tell James Madison from John Adams? “Hamilton’s” ability to transcend the specific cultural context of its inception is the ultimate proof that it is a great work of art with universal significance.Hearing Miranda’s work lent a new vitality through a new language — acted, sung and danced by a multiethnic, multinational cast, the like of which has never been assembled in Germany before — was edifying, riveting and inspiring. I hope that Hamburgers thrill to this German “Hamilton” as much as I did. They would be crazy not to.HamiltonAt the Operettenhaus in Hamburg, Germany, for an open-ended run; stage-entertainment.de. More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      They Translated ‘Hamilton’ Into German. Was It Easy? Nein.

      by

      HAMBURG, Germany — “Hamilton” is a mouthful, even in English. Forty-seven songs; more than 20,000 words; fast-paced lyrics, abundant wordplay, complex rhyming patterns, plus allusions not only to hip-hop and musical theater but also to arcane aspects of early American history.So imagine the challenge, then, of adapting the story of America’s first treasury secretary for a German-speaking audience — preserving the rhythm, the sound, and the sensibility of the original musical while translating its dense libretto into a language characterized by multisyllabic compound nouns and sentences that often end with verbs, and all in a society that has minimal familiarity with the show’s subject matter.For the last four years — a timeline prolonged, like so many others, by the coronavirus pandemic — a team of translators has been working with the “Hamilton” creators to develop a German version, the first production of the juggernaut musical in a language other than English. The German-speaking cast — most of them actors of color, reflecting the show’s defining decision to retell America’s revolutionary origins with the voices of today’s diverse society — is now in the final days of rehearsal; previews begin Sept. 24 and the opening is scheduled to take place Oct. 6.The production is an important test for “Hamilton,” which already has six English-language productions running in North America, Britain and Australia, and is hoping to follow Germany with a Spanish version in Madrid and Mexico City. But whether a translated “Hamilton” will succeed remains to be seen.Hamburg has emerged, somewhat improbably, as a commercial theater destination — the third biggest city for musical theater in the world, after New York and London — with a sizable market of German-speaking tourists. The market began with “Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” and Disney shows are a big draw: “The Lion King” and “Frozen” are now playing side-by-side on the south bank of the Elbe River, accessible by a five-minute ferry ride.But less familiar shows have had a harder time here — “Kinky Boots” closed after a year. Sure, there are hard-core German “Hamilton” fans (some of them upset that the show is being performed in a different language from that of the cast album they love), but there are also plenty of Germans who have never even heard of Alexander Hamilton.Charles Simmons (George Washington)Florian Thoss for The New York TimesChasity Crisp (Angelica Schuyler)Florian Thoss for The New York Times“history has its eyes on you”Original: “History has its eyes on you.”German: “Die Geschichte wird dabei Zeuge sein.”Back-translation: “History will be witness.”“It’s not like ‘Frozen,’ which everybody knows,” said Simone Linhof, the artistic producer of Stage Entertainment, an Amsterdam-based production company that operates four theaters in Hamburg and has the license to present “Hamilton” in German. Stage Entertainment is putting “Hamilton” in its smallest Hamburg venue, a 1,400 seat house in the lively St. Pauli district. “‘Hamilton’ is more challenging,” Linhof said.The German cast has already adopted its own take on the show: Whereas in New York, the musical is celebrated for its dramatization of America’s founding, almost every actor interviewed here described it as a universal human story about the rise and fall of a gifted but flawed man.“People should stop focusing on that it is American history, and focus more on the relationship between the characters,” said Mae Ann Jorolan, the Swiss actress playing Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds. “‘Hamilton’ is all about having the drive to achieve something.”International productions have become an important contributor to the immense profitability of a handful of shows birthed on Broadway or in the West End, and they are often staged in the vernacular to make them more accessible. “The Phantom of the Opera,” for example, has been performed in 17 languages.For “Hamilton,” Stage Entertainment executives invited translators to apply for the job by sending in sample songs, and then, not satisfied with any of the submissions, asked two of the applicants who had never met one another to collaborate. One of them, Kevin Schroeder, was a veteran musical theater translator whose proposal was clear but cautious; the other was Sera Finale, a rapper-turned-songwriter whose proposal was imaginative but imprecise.“Kevin was like the kindergarten teacher, and I was that child who wanted to run in every direction and be punky,” said Finale, who hadn’t been to the theater since seeing “Peter Pan” as a child and had to look up “Hamilton” on Wikipedia. “If you have an open mic in Kreuzberg,” he said, referring to a hip Berlin neighborhood, “and you’re standing there with a blunt, normally you don’t go to a musical later in the night.”Both of them were wary of working together. “I thought, ‘What does he know?’” Schroeder said. “And he thought, ‘I’ll show this musical theater guy.’”But they gave it a go. They wrote three songs together, and then flew to New York to pitch them to Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics for “Hamilton.” Miranda can curse and coo in German (his wife is half Austrian), but that’s about it; he surprised the would-be translators by showing up for their meeting with his wife’s Austrian cousin.“Lin is a smart guy,” Finale said, joking that the presence of the cousin ensured “that I don’t rap cooking recipes or the telephone book.”Miranda had been on the other side once — he translated some of the lyrics of “West Side Story” into Spanish for a 2009 Broadway revival — and he remembered observing how that show’s lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, listened for the sounds of the Spanish words. Miranda applied that experience to the German “Hamilton.”“I’m going to feel the internal rhyme, or lack of internal rhyme, of which there is a lot in this show, and so it’s important to me whenever that can be maintained without losing comprehensibility,” Miranda said. “That’s part of what makes hip-hop so much fun, are the internal assonances of it, and they did an incredible job of maintaining that.”Mae Ann Jorolan (Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds)Florian Thoss for The New York TimesIvy Quainoo (Eliza Hamilton)Florian Thoss for The New York Times“helpless”Original: “I have never been the type to try and grab the spotlight.”German: “Ich gehör’ zu den’n, die auf der Party gern am Rand steh’n.”Back-translation: “I belong to those who like to stand on the sidelines at parties.”Once Finale and Schroeder got the job, the process was painstaking, reflecting not only the complexity of the original language but also the fact that the show is almost entirely sung-through, meaning there is very little of the spoken dialogue that is generally easier to translate, because it is unconstrained by melody. They tried divvying up the songs and writing separately, but didn’t like the results, so instead they spent a half year sitting across from one another at the kitchen table in Finale’s Berlin apartment, debating ideas until both were satisfied. They would send Miranda and his team proposed German lyrics as well as a literal translation back into English, allowing Miranda to understand how their proposal differed from his original.Kurt Crowley, an original member of “Hamilton” music team — he was an associate conductor and then the Broadway music director — became the point person for the project. He developed a multicolored spreadsheet tracking the feedback process; not only that, but he set about learning German, first from apps, and then with a tutor.“A lot of the coaching and music direction I do has to do with the language,” he said. “I couldn’t think of any other way to do my job besides knowing exactly what they were saying.”In some ways, the wordiness of “Hamilton” proved advantageous. “At least we had all these syllables,” Schroeder said. “It gave us room to play around.”Hamilton’s hip-hop elements also had benefits, Schroeder said. “If you come from a musical theater background, you’re used to being very correct and precise, but that’s not how rap works,” he said. “You have to find the flow, and you can play around with the beat.”There were so many variables to consider. Finale ticked off a list: words, syllables, meter, sound, flow and position. They needed to preserve the essential meaning of each element of the show, but also elide some of the more arcane details, and they needed to echo the musicality of the language.Figures of speech and wordplay rarely survive translation, but Miranda encouraged the translators to come up with their own metaphors. One example that Finale is proud of concerns Hamilton’s fixation on mortality. In English, he says “I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory.” In German, he will say words meaning, “Every day death is writing between the lines of my diary.”There were easy pleasures: The youngest Schuyler sister’s signature line, “And Peggy,” translated readily to “Und Peggy.” But for the eldest Schuyler sister, lyrics got more complicated: In “Satisfied,” a rapid-fire song set at Hamilton’s wedding, “I feel like there’s a thousand extra words they added to it,” said Chasity Crisp, the actress playing Angelica. “I’m still trying to learn how to breathe in the number. It’s incredibly fast. But there’s no other way you can do it — otherwise you wouldn’t be telling the story right.”The Schuyler Sisters: Chasity Crisp (Angelica), Mae Ann Jorolan (Peggy) and Ivy Quainoo (Eliza).Florian Thoss for The New York Times“the schuyler sisters”Original: “I’m looking for a mind at work.”German: “Ich will ‘nen Mann, bei dem was läuft.”Back-translation: “I want a man who has got something going on.”A few English phrases — well-known to fans, repeated often, and easy to understand — remain, including a reference to New York as “the greatest city in the world,” as do some English titles and American name pronunciations.But most of the quotes from American musicals and rap songs are gone; in their place are references to the German hip-hop scene, including a description of Hamilton and his friends as “die fantasticschen Vier,” which means “the fantastic four” but is also the name of a band from Stuttgart, plus a moment when Burr says to Angelica, “You are a babe — I’d like to drink your bath water,” which is a line in a classic German rap song.There were, of course, disagreements along the way — over tone (an initial translation described the West Indies, where Hamilton grew up, as “filthy,” which Miranda rejected as going too far), and content: The translators, for rhyming reasons, wanted Eliza, angry over her husband’s infidelity, to tell him, in German, “All this shall burn” rather than “I hope you burn.” Miranda sacrificed the rhyme to preserve her personalized fury.An unexpected factor was the way that the translation affected choreography. Much of the show’s movement echoes words in the score; as those words changed, there was a risk that the movement would not make sense. For example: Initially the translators proposed to replace “The room where it happens” with a German phrase meaning “behind closed doors,” which they thought was a clearer image for the German audience. But the choreography of that song suggests a room-like space, so the choreographer, Andy Blankenbuehler, balked, and the original concept stayed. The song is now called “In diesem Zimmer,” meaning “in this room.”But Blankenbuehler also saw — well, heard — one attribute of German that was a bonus: its percussive sound. “The thing I love is the consonants are so guttural and aggressive,” he said. “Right away it sounds awesome — it sounds like the movement.”The principal cast members are all fluent in German, and many of them were skeptical that the translation could be done effectively. “At the beginning I was afraid that they won’t get the essence of what ‘Hamilton’ is — that they wouldn’t get these little nuances, the play on words and the intelligence of it all,” Crisp said.Fans were worried too, and weighed in on social media. “People are skeptical when something really cool is being put into German,” said Ivy Quainoo, the actress playing Eliza. “Hamilton has all these New York rap references, and this East Coast swagger — how is this going to translate?”The German cast is the most international ever assembled for a “Hamilton” production, hailing from 13 countries, reflecting the degree to which Hamburg has become a magnet for European musical theater performers, and also the wide search the producers needed to conduct to find German-speaking musical theater performers of color.Miranda said assembling a diverse cast was his biggest concern about staging the show in Hamburg. “The image of Germany in the world was not of a very heterogenous society,” he said. “That was my only hesitation, born of my own ignorance.”Benet Monteiro (Alexander Hamilton)Florian Thoss for The New York TimesGino Emnes (Aaron Burr)Florian Thoss for The New York Times“my shot”Original: “I am not throwing away my shot.”German: “Mann, ich hab’ nur diesen einen Schuss.”Back-translation: “Man, I’ve only got this one shot.”Many of the actors are immigrants, or the children of immigrants, giving particular poignancy to the show’s reliable applause line, “Immigrants: We get the job done.” Quainoo, playing Eliza, is a Berliner whose parents are from Ghana; Jorolan’s parents moved to Switzerland from the Philippines. Hamilton is played by Benet Monteiro, a Brazilian who moved to Hamburg 12 years ago to join the cast of “The Lion King”; Burr is played by Gino Emnes, who was born in the Netherlands to a mother from Aruba and a father from Suriname.Monteiro and Emnes have had long careers in musical theater in Germany, but some of the members of the cast are newer to the genre. The roles of Hercules Mulligan and James Madison are played by a German rapper named Redchild, whose father is from Benin. “I had a very negative view of musical theater,” he said. “To me it was a quite limited genre, and I didn’t have high hopes.” But he heard about “Hamilton” from a friend, watched it on Disney+, and decided to audition.Very few of the performers had actually seen an in-person production of “Hamilton.” “I was in New York, and I wanted to, but it was too expensive,” Crisp said.Crisp represents another demographic slice of the cast: a child of an American serviceman. She was born in Mississippi but her father was stationed in Berlin when she was just a year old, and she has spent her whole life in Germany. Charles Simmons, the singer playing Washington, is originally from Kansas City, Mo., but his father, a soldier, was twice stationed in Germany, and Simmons has made the country his home. “It’s fun to tell the story of my birthplace to my place of residence,” he said.Many cast members said they experienced racism growing up in Europe. “People only saw me as the Asian girl,” Jorolan said. And Redchild said he would often be asked if he was adopted. “People do not think you can be German,” he said.Those experiences have informed the way they think about “Hamilton.” “I’m playing a white slave owner, and it feels weird because I know that parts of my family have been slaves,” Redchild said. And Emnes noted, “I think in the States and London, the discussion about seeing diversity onstage is much older, and developed. In Europe, it’s a very young discussion.”But all said just being in the rehearsal room was striking. “It’s very exciting that we have the cast that we have, even though Germany is a very white country,” Simmons said. “The whole notion of people of color playing white people is pretty revolutionary.”The path to Hamburg for American and British musicals is well-worn; it began in 1986, with a production of “Cats.” Stage Entertainment opened “The Lion King” here in 2001; Ambassador Theater Group, a British company that also operates two Broadway houses, is the most recent player, with a German-language production of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” (which is not a musical, but sells like one).The commercial theater scene stands out in Germany, where much stage work is done by government-funded institutions that often present avant-garde plays. But Michael Otremba, the chief executive of Hamburg’s tourism agency, said musical theater serves an important audience. “This is not the mass of German people who have read Goethe and Schiller,” he said. “There is also this market for light entertainment. And ‘Hamilton’ helps this genre to prove they are more than Andrew Lloyd Webber and Disney.”Hamburg is overshadowed by Berlin and Munich as a tourist destination, but visitorship here has been growing: In 2001 the city had 4.8 million overnight visitors, and by 2019 it was up to 15.4 million, Otremba said. And culture is an important part of the attraction. The city frequently notes its place in Beatles history (the band performed in clubs here); it has just opened a striking new concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie, that has been embraced by locals and tourists; and then there are the big shows here from the United States and Britain.“The musicals are a pillar for the development of tourism,” Otremba said. “All the marketing for these productions is enormous, and every time they promote their shows, they mention Hamburg.”Once the American team moves on, day-to-day oversight of “Hamilton” will fall to Denise Obedekah, a German performer whose father is from Liberia. Obedekah was a dancer in multiple German shows — most recently, “Tina” — but was ready for a change.“The musical theater audience in Germany is a little conservative,” Obedekah said. “For a very long time, when musical theater was produced in Germany, it was done in a very safe way,” she added. “Producers need to be more brave, and educate our audience to new material. I know this is a risk, because we don’t know if the audience is going to react in the way that they did in the States or in England. But it’s definitely necessary. ” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Six Lyrics That Show Why ‘Hamilton’ Is Tough to Translate

      by

      A direct transfer of words was never going to work for such a complex show. So the team involved got creative.How does one translate “Hamilton” into another language? That was the challenge facing Sera Finale, a rapper-turned-songwriter, and Kevin Schroeder, a seasoned musical theater translator, when they were asked to collaborate on a German version of the show — the first in a language other than English.The project turned out to be just as complicated as they had feared: complex rhyme schemes, elaborate wordplay and so many songs. There were drafts and demos and revisions; a member of the “Hamilton” music team, Kurt Crowley, learned German to help coordinate the process, and ultimately Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s creator, had to approve or reject each line.Here are six lyrics that demonstrate some of the challenges the team faced as they sought to preserve the meaning and melody of the original, but in a language with different sounds and syntax. The first line is the original English lyric; the second is the German lyric; and the third is the so-called back translation, which is what the German words literally mean in English.Avoiding HyperboleBurr: How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a/Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten/Spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor/Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?“Alexander Hamilton” (English)Gino EmnesBurr: Wie wird ein Bastard/der vom Schoß einer trostlosen Dirne kroch/Aus ’nem gottverdammten, verlor’nem Loch in der Karibik/Ohne Titel, ohne Mittel, ohne Werte/Am Ende doch ein Held und ein Gelehrter?(How does a bastard/Who crawled out of the lap of a bleak harlot/From a goddamned, lost hole in the Caribbean/With no title, no means, no merits/In the end still become a hero and a scholar?)“Alexander Hamilton” (German)Gino EmnesThese are the first words from “Alexander Hamilton,” the musical’s opening song, which introduce the title character with a description of his humble upbringing. The challenge here was to maintain the original lyric’s directness without overstating the case or demeaning the West Indies. The original proposed German lyric referred to Hamilton as a “Bastardblag,” an arcane word meaning bastard brat, to his mother as a “Hure,” meaning whore, and to the islands of Hamilton’s upbringing as “verdreckten,” meaning filthy. Miranda thought those words went too far, and asked for them to be dialed back. “The first draft was almost Trumpian,” he said, alluding to a coarse phrase the former president used to refer to Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations. “To me that’s not the intent of the lyric. I never wanted to comment on Nevis, or St. Croix. It was just this really small part of the world. That’s an example of something that could easily get lost in translation if you’re not on it.”✣ ✣ ✣Quoting Rap SongsBurr: Ah, so you’ve discussed me/I’m a trust fund, baby, you can trust me.“The Schuyler Sisters” (English)Chasity Crisp and Gino EmnesBurr: Schiess mich über’n Haufen, doch/Du bist’n Babe, ich möcht’ dein Badewasser saufen.(Shoot me down but/You are a babe, I’d like to drink your bath water.)“The Schuyler Sisters” (German)Chasity Crisp and Gino EmnesThe original “Hamilton” score includes a number of quotations from American hip-hop songs. Most of them were cut from the German version because the translations made them unrecognizable. But, in an effort to accomplish the same effect, the translators inserted several quotations from German hip-hop songs into the German score. In a section of the song “The Schuyler Sisters,” when Aaron Burr flirts with Angelica Schuyler, the translators found a place to insert a phrase meaning “You are a babe, I’d like to drink your bath water,” from a 1995 German song “Ja klar,” which was a hit for Sabrina Setlur, who rapped as Schwester S. Miranda, who listened to each German song quoted before approving the citations, said he views “Hamilton” as a love letter to hip-hop, as well as to musical theater, and that he considers the hip-hop quotations as a point of entry for some audience members. “A hip-hop fan who comes in, maybe, with their arms crossed, hears those references and goes ‘OK, the person who wrote this obviously loves this culture and loves the music’,” he said. “And so we wanted to continue to reflect that.”✣ ✣ ✣New ImageryAngelica: So this is what it feels like to match wits/With someone at your level! What the hell is the catch?/It’s the feeling of freedom, of seeing the light/It’s Ben Franklin with a key and a kite/You see it right?“Satisfied” (English)Chasity CrispAngelica: So kribbeln Schmetterlinge, wenn sie starten/Wir beide voll auf einem Level, offene Karten!/Das Herz in den Wolken, ich flieg’ aus der Bahn/Die Füße kommen an den Boden nich’ ran/Mein lieber Schwan!(So that’s how butterflies tingle when they take off/We’re on the same level, all cards on the table!/My heart in the clouds, I’m thrown off track/My feet don’t touch the floor/My dear swan!)“Satisfied” (German)Chasity CrispThe original language is packed with American metaphors and idioms that just don’t translate. So the translators were given license to come up with their own turns of phrase. This example is from the song “Satisfied,” in which Angelica Schuyler, preparing to toast Hamilton’s marriage to her sister, recalls the first time she met him. The images are completely different (and the references to Ben Franklin are gone) but the meaning remains. “That section sounds fantastic, and gives the same feeling of falling in love for the first time,” Miranda said. “The metaphor may be different, but it keeps its propulsiveness.”✣ ✣ ✣Prioritizing MeaningEliza: You forfeit all rights to my heart/You forfeit the place in our bed/You sleep in your office instead/With only the memories/Of when you were mine/I hope that you burn“Burn” (English)Ivy QuainooEliza: Du nahmst dir das recht auf mein Herz/Den Platz hier in unserem Bett/Ich lösch unser leben komplett/Dir bleibt nur die Asche/Du warst einmal mein/Ich hoffe du brennst(You took the right to my heart from yourself/The place here in our bed/I am erasing our life completely/All that’s left for you is the ashes/You used to be mine once/I hope that you burn)“Burn” (German)Ivy QuainooThere were many moments when Miranda et al. allowed the German translators to bend the original meaning in order to preserve lyricism and melody. But there were other moments when they insisted on literalism, and the end of the song “Burn,” in which Eliza Hamilton expresses her outrage at her husband’s infidelity, was one of those. The translators initially sought to have Eliza repeat “brenn’n,” a shortened form of the word for “burn,” throughout the song. But that meant changing the final line of the song from words meaning “I hope that you burn” to words meaning “All this shall burn.” Miranda rejected that idea, insisting that Eliza direct her anger squarely at her husband. So now the song ends with “brennst,” which is not a perfect echo of the word used earlier in the song, but which preserves the original meaning: “You burn.” “I really just wanted to make sure the last line was personal: ‘It’s not about the world — it’s about you. This is what you did, and these are your consequences’,” Miranda said.✣ ✣ ✣Protecting ChoreographyHamilton: Teach me how to say goodbye/Rise up, rise up, rise up/Eliza“The World Was Wide Enough” (English)Benet MonteiroHamilton: Weitergeh’n und Abschied nehm’n/Frei sein, frei sein, frei sein/Eliza(Move on and say goodbye/Be free, be free, be free/Eliza)“The World Was Wide Enough” (German)Benet MonteiroIn the show’s penultimate song, “The World Was Wide Enough,” Hamilton dies. As that moment nears, he repeats the phrase “Rise up,” perhaps alluding to ambition, or revolution, or perseverance, and pictures his wife. The German translators at first proposed a lyric that preserved the internal rhyme of the lyric, but altered its meaning, using the word “leise,” which means quietly, and which beautifully echoes the name “Eliza,” to replace “Rise up.” But choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler objected, because the movement at that moment has the ensemble becoming more active — more “rise up” than “quietly” — and he felt it was important to preserve the relationship between the words and the movement. The translators went back to the drawing board, and came up with something less poetic but more protective of the dance concerns. “The complicating factor is that Andy choreographs to lyric, so when the lyrics underneath the movement have changed, what adjustments have to happen?” Miranda said. “I’m trying to keep those connected.”✣ ✣ ✣A Pointed AdditionHamilton: America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me“The World Was Wide Enough” (English)Benet MonteiroHamilton: America, durch deine Brust pumpt Sklavenblut, Moral und Wut.(America, through your breast is pounding the blood of slaves, morality and rage.)“The World Was Wide Enough” (German)Benet MonteiroThe German translators saw an opportunity to interpolate a reference to America’s troubled history with slavery. “Our version is kind of a German perspective on America,” said Kevin Schroeder, one of the translators. “He’s saying ‘unfinished symphony,’ and that also implies there are some flaws.”Audio production by Arjen Mensinga and More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Meat Loaf, Britney and a ‘Cancel Culture’ Musical

      by

      At Theatertreffen, an annual celebration of the best in German-language performance, music plays a profound, and intelligent, role.HAMBURG, Germany — During the five and a half hours I spent immersed in “Die Ruhe” (“The Calm”), a performative installation that was one of the 10 productions selected for this year’s Theatertreffen, I put a live worm in my mouth, cut off a lock of my hair and held a giant African snail.I also participated in a group therapy session, during which a severe doctor pushed us to share our secrets and fears, and drank bitter mushroom tea (non-psychedelic, I hope), vodka and schnapps.Along with the other 34 ticket holders for that day’s performance in the Altona district of Hamburg, I had checked in as a prospective patient at a fictional facility for people exhausted by modern life.At once intimate and visionary, “Die Ruhe” was far and away the most unusual and daring title in the remarkable first live Theatertreffen since the start of the pandemic. After spending the past two years online, the festival, which celebrates the best in German, Austrian and Swiss theater, came roaring back to life with a wide-ranging and eclectic lineup that highlighted the creativity, resourcefulness and persistence of German-language theater in 2021.Originally staged by the Deutsches Schauspielhaus theater here, “Die Ruhe” was the brainchild of SIGNA, a Copenhagen-based performance collective led by the artist couple Signa and Arthur Köstler, which has specialized in large-scale, site-specific performance installations for the past two decades. SIGNA was previously invited to Theatertreffen, in 2008, with an eight-day performance held in a former rail yard in Berlin. This time around, the installation was too complicated to transfer to Berlin, where all the other Theatertreffen performances have taken place, so in a break with tradition, “Die Ruhe” has been mounted in the former post office in Hamburg where it was originally seen in November.With the other members of my small group, I was guided through a sinister sanitorium whose inhabitants — patients and doctors alike — seemed to have all suffered a psychological collapse. Upon entering the post office, we were welcomed to the institute by being asked to lie down on mattresses on the floor. Shortly afterward, we changed out of our clothing and into the institute’s baggy uniform of gray hoodies and sweatpants.Simon Steinhorst in “Die Ruhe,” which was staged in Hamburg.Erich GoldmannAs I was led with the group through dimly lit corridors and rooms — including a simulated forest filled with damp earth and dry leaves — by a fragile and haunted guide, Aurel, it became clear that the institute was the center of a threatening and shamanistic sect. Over the multiple floors of the post office, SIGNA and its large cast (there’s an almost even number of paying participants and institute members) formulated a holistic worldview for the cultlike institute, complete with an origin story and a rigid creed that its adherents, even the mild-mannered Aurel, were fanatically devoted to: a vision of Edenic return symbolized by becoming one with the forest.Aesthetically, this stylishly designed immersive experience seemed to take inspiration from movies: from recent films of dystopian horror, including Yorgos Lanthimos’s “The Lobster” and Ari Aster’s “Midsommer,” as well as Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch, masters of atmospheric dread. As a marathon plunge into a complex and intricate world, “Die Ruhe” resembled another recent and more infamous project: the scientific institute DAU, devised by the Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky in Kharkiv, Ukraine, between 2009 and 2011, which was recreated in Paris in 2019. Like that controversial performance, “Die Ruhe” contained deeply unsettling elements: a strong, pervasive atmosphere of menace, as well as a demanding (and at times exhausting) format that forced the viewer-participant into disturbingly close confrontations with cruelty, manipulation and violence.Back in Berlin, none of the other Theatertreffen shows I saw came close to “Die Ruhe” in sustained intensity and startling originality, but the productions I caught were of a consistently high caliber, and formally innovative.A scene in Claudia Bauer’s “humanistää!,” an exploration of texts by the experimental Austrian writer Ernst Jandl.Nikolaus Ostermann/Volkstheater One of the lineup’s most striking features was how profoundly, and intelligently, musical many of the shows were. In several of the best plays, live music played a fundamental role in generating a distinctive aesthetic as well as meaning. In thinking so musically about theatrical practice, it seemed that many directors at the festival were pushing against the limits of language.From the hits by Britney Spears and Meat Loaf crooned by the cast of Christopher Rüping’s “Das neue Leben — where do we go from here,” to Barbara Morgenstern’s vast and haunting original score for Helgard Haug’s “All right. Good night,” a hypnotic and mostly wordless production about the 2014 Malaysia Airlines disaster, this Theatertreffen seemed to insist on the primacy of music both to conjure and to enrich intellectual and emotional states.The single most astonishing show on a traditional stage was Claudia Bauer’s “humanistää!,” a surreal and dazzlingly inventive exploration of poetic and dramatic texts by the experimental Austrian writer Ernst Jandl.Bauer is one of Germany’s leading directors, and she created this breathtaking theatrical immersion in Jandl’s playful linguistic cosmos at the Volkstheater in the poet’s native Vienna, which is where I caught the production several months ago. (It remains in the company’s repertoire and is also available to stream on Theatertreffen’s website until September.)In “humanistää!,” 10 works by Jandl attain new vitality through conventional monologues, onstage projections and elaborate vocal performances reminiscent of Jandl’s radio plays. Bauer complements the torrent of highly musical texts with startling visuals and energetic performances that beautifully match the rhythm of Jandl’s sound poems. Eight actors perform vigorous and highly choreographed pantomimes and dances amid Patricia Talacko’s shape-shifting set, which is spectacularly lit by Paul Grilj. Throughout, Peer Baierlein’s propulsive music, performed live, accompanies the performers as both their bodies and their voices twist through Jandl’s linguistic games.Lindy Larsson in Yael Ronen’s “Slippery Slope,” an English-language musical about cancel culture.Ute LangkafelText and music combine in a much more straightforward, yet no less riotous, way in the Israeli director Yael Ronen’s “Slippery Slope,” an English-language musical about cancel culture with infectious songs and foul-mouthed lyrics by the singer-songwriter Shlomi Shaban. When it premiered at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin in November, it was an immediate cult sensation. It’s not hard to see why.The plot, about a disgraced Swedish pop star (Lindy Larsson) trying to stage a comeback, and his protégé (Riah Knight), whose meteoric rise is inversely proportional to her mentor’s fall, is both sordid and deliriously enjoyable.What’s more, the five actors in the show can actually sing — a true rarity at German theaters — and they belt out Shaban’s rousing and cheeky numbers with gusto. For perhaps the first time I can remember, Broadway-caliber musical entertainment has come to a German dramatic stage. (It’s the only production from a Berlin repertory theater at the festival.)Cultural appropriation, political correctness, #MeToo debates and social media trolling are gently skewered in a production that is eye-popping and outrageously glam. At the same time, everything is so loopy and chock-full of schlock that there’s little danger of anyone’s taking offense at this vulgar and punchy musical burlesque. Although its themes are urgently contemporary, “Slippery Slope” handles them with a lightness and wit that are rare in theaters here. I’m glad that the Theatertreffen jury, a high-minded bunch of tastemakers if there ever was one, selected it alongside the festival’s more straight-faced entries. It’s a sign of their belief in theater’s ability to startle, to provoke and, yes, to entertain.TheatertreffenThrough May 22 at various theaters in Berlin, and at the Paketpostamt in Hamburg; berlinerfestspiele.de. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Oedipus Takes to the Stages in Berlin

      by

      Four interpretations of the Greek myth have been produced in the German capital, all with resonances for our moment.BERLIN — “The city reeks with death in her streets,” the chorus laments in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex.” Thebes is in the grip of a deadly plague. The king summons a prophet to divine the will of the gods, who accuses the monarch, “You are the cursed polluter of this land.”The theme of nature striking back, revolting against unnatural acts, is one that resonates 20 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and after a summer of climate-change-related extreme weather events, including flooding in Germany, deadly heat waves in Canada and fires in Greece.All that may help explain why, at the beginning of the theater season in Berlin, Sophocles’ tragic hero, the original mama’s boy, has been center stage in a quartet of new productions at some of the city’s leading companies.Arguably the most eagerly awaited was Maja Zade’s new play, “ödipus,” a contemporary reworking of the myth, which premiered at the Athens Epidaurus Festival this month and recently transferred to the Schaubühne. Michael, a young employee at a German chemical company, is dating his much older boss, Christina. Their relationship begins to fray over the handling of an investigation into a chemical spill, and Michael learns that the accident also caused the death of Christina’s first husband. Several revelations later, Michael puts two and two together and realizes that — spoiler alert — he killed his father and slept with his mother.The Kazakh director Evgeny Titov’s surreal production of “Œdipe” is far and away the most brutal of Berlin’s Oedipal offerings.Monika RittershausAny hint of ancient Greek cosmology is scrubbed clean from Zade’s version. The most explicit reference we get to myth in Thomas Ostermeier’s sleek and sterile production is a small statue of a sphinx perched on a kitchen counter. Jan Pappelbaum’s sparse set, framed by neon lights, has a sitcom-like realism. The dialogue, dispatched by the four-person cast around the kitchen table or a backyard grill, is stiff and largely functional. The actors struggle more against a poorly made play than they do against fate.The only one who succeeds is Caroline Peters as Christina, who, even more than her young lover, is the center of Zade’s play. Peters shows her talent for transcending mediocre dramatic material just as she did in the recent Schaubühne production of Simon Stone’s “Yerma.” At the climax of the production, she explains the awful truth to Michael. Her face is projected in close-up on a screen (the only time that the intermittent video serves a purpose), allowing us to register her every twitch during the lengthy speech. She pulls off the tricky monologue like a doctor steeling herself to give a patient a terrible diagnosis, putting aside her bedside manner because there’s no way to sugarcoat a revelation this horrific.Along with the gods and fate, Zade’s play also dispenses with the chorus, a mainstay of Greek drama, who provide a collective counterpoint to the individuals at the center of the drama. Chanting in unison, they also fill in background information and comment on the action, serving as something of a conduit between the main actors and the audience.This chorus, on the other hand, assumes center stage in the Deutsches Theater’s highly ritualistic “Oedipus,” a largely faithful production of Sophocles’ play directed by Ulrich Rasche. The contrast in tone and style with the down-to-earth realism of Ostermeier’s production could not be more striking.Rasche has devised an extremely precise mode of Maschinentheater, a theatrical approach that relies heavily on elaborate scenic elements and stagecraft. His industrial and dark productions derive much of their sweaty vitality from intense physical performances and droning music. His “Oedipus” is based on an 1804 translation by the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin, whose language is archaic and pungently lyrical. The cast, treading in place on a constantly rotating stage, enunciates the text crisply and with studied intensity.The Deutsches Theater’s highly ritualistic “Oedipus,” a largely faithful production of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” directed by Ulrich Rasche. Arno DeclairNico van Wersch’s score includes an electric bass, Moog synthesizer and microtonal keyboard. The chorus chants in unison, creating a percussive atmosphere that harmonizes with the concentric rings of color-changing fluorescent lights that tilt from the ceiling. The effect is arresting for the first hour, but then quickly turns soporific. Rasche takes his time — just shy of three hours — and the slow-moving production is maddeningly deliberate.Music played an even more prominent role in Berlin’s second pair of Oedipal productions.The British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage was a 20-something upstart in 1988 when he wrote “Greek,” which recently opened the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s season. This short, two-act opera is many things, including a scathing political and social commentary about Thatcher-era England and a self-conscious sendup of opera as an art form that, at its origin, sought to resurrect the spirit of ancient Greek drama.A spunky and potty-mouthed comic strip opera, “Greek” transposes the action from ancient Thebes to East London. Oedipus becomes Eddy, an angry young working-class man looking to better himself while fleeing a horrible fate predicted by a carnival fortune teller that has become a running gag in his family.In the Deutsche Oper’s parking lot (a corona-averse location also used last year for a reduced production of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold”), four singers pranced and strutted in the young German director Pinar Karabulut’s cartoonishly campy production, wearing colorful variations on ancient Greek garb, down to orange, purple and green curly wigs and beards. There’s a fair amount of spoken text, which the members of the all-American cast dispatched with exaggerated cockney accents when they weren’t belting out the eclectic score, which careens from dance hall crudeness to poignant lyricism.Dean Murphy in the British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Greek,” staged in the parking lot of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Eike WalkenhorstTurnage’s irreverent work is one of the more recent musical versions of the Oedipus myth, a list that includes Stravinsky’s 1927 “Oedipus Rex” and the Doors’ “The End.” Among the most powerful is George Enescu’s 1936 opera, “Œdipe,” an underperformed 20th-century masterpiece that recently opened the Komische Oper Berlin’s season. (In a rare coincidence, a new production of the opera also kicked off the season at the Paris Opera.)The Kazakh director Evgeny Titov’s surreal production is far and away the most brutal of Berlin’s Oedipal offerings. The set resembles a derelict madhouse and is frequently awash in blood, from the tragic hero’s difficult birth to his transfiguring death in Colonus. In between are graphic depictions of Laius’ disembowelment and of Oedipus putting out his own eyes.Enescu’s musical language fuses various early modernist styles with traditional Romanian melodies and harmonies, which the orchestra of the Komische Oper, under the baton of its general music director, Ainars Rubikis, performs with assurance and intensity. The lengthy title role features ample Sprechgesang, a vocal style halfway between song and speech. The British baritone Leigh Melrose’s searing performance is as much a dramatic feat as it is a musical achievement. Of all the Oedipuses haunting the German capital, his is the most affecting, tragic and believable.Enescu began writing “Œdipe” shortly after Sigmund Freud first theorized the Oedipus complex, and the composer’s Oedipus is an archetype of modern man who, despite his quest for knowledge and self-understanding, is blind to himself, incapable of outrunning destiny and the agent of his own destruction.Is it any wonder that some of today’s leading theatermakers have turned to this 2,500-year-old existential detective story as we grapple with the catastrophes affecting our bodies and our planet? Like the ancients, we get the myths we deserve, not the ones we want.From left, Renato Schuch, Caroline Peters and Christian Tschirner in “ödipus,” by Maja Zade, directed by Thomas Ostermeier at the Schaubühne Berlin.Gianmarco Bresadolaödipus. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Schaubühne Berlin, through Sept. 26.Œdipe. Directed by Evgeny Titov. Komische Oper Berlin, through Sept. 26.Oedipus. Directed by Ulrich Rasche. Deutsches Theater Berlin, through Oct. 17. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      A German Festival Takes Stock of Pandemic-Era Theater

      by

      Online for a second year, Theatertreffen showcases the highs and lows of recent innovations in German-language digital dramaturgy.MUNICH — The most immediately striking aspect of this year’s Theatertreffen, the annual showcase of the best of German-language theater, is the numbers.To make their selection, the 2020 festival jury watched 285 productions in 60 cities across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The resulting program, which runs until Monday, is dauntingly full, with 80 hours of streaming events on a digital festival platform.When the seven jurors announced their selection in February, the festival hoped to hold in-person performances. But a third wave of the coronavirus, which has gripped Germany in recent months, meant that for the second year in a row, Theatertreffen was confined to this online presentation.Since the start of the pandemic, German playhouses have been uniquely proactive in adapting to social distancing restrictions. Many have devised new theatrical formats, including immersive live productions for solo spectators or digital-only productions that have enlisted social media, video messaging apps, chat rooms and video gaming technology to create art that responds to our circumstances.Keeping up with this creative proliferation has been occasionally exhausting; more consistently, it has been inspiring to see how theater here — much of which receives robust state funding — has refused to lie down and die.A moment during the 12-hour production “Show Me a Good Time,” by the German-British theater collective Gob Squad.Eike Walkenhorst/Berlin FestivalI had hoped that this year’s Theatertreffen would take the full measure of this challenging year, so I was dismayed that the jury chose only one “corona show” among the 10 productions selected for the festival.But what a production it was!“Show Me a Good Time” by the German-British theater collective Gob Squad, was a wild noon-to-midnight performance that whizzed between the empty stage of the Berliner Festspiele and various participants in the outside world, discussing life during the pandemic, conducting man-on-the-street interviews about theater and soliciting artistic suggestions from callers. The performers at the theater, driving through Berlin and traipsing around England were connected via headsets and cameras in what often had the aspect of a theatrical telethon.Yet despite the marathon running time, it was accessible and down to earth. By design, it was a show that one could dip into and out of at will; over the 12 hours, more than 3,000 people popped their virtual heads in.While meditating on life, theater and the intersection of the two, the performers routinely injected their largely ad-libbed performances (in German and English) with generous doses of humor and silliness. One example: For two minutes each hour, they dropped everything and screeched with laughter.Rainald Goetz’s “Empire of Death” directed by Karin Beier, who leads the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Arno DeclairWhile none of the other productions provided a similar degree of meaningful reflection on life during Covid-19, the reality of the pandemic clearly influenced the aesthetic choices behind several of the other streamed productions.Theaters had already reopened, at limited capacity, in Switzerland when a livestream of Schauspielhaus Zurich’s “It’s Only the End of the World” opened Theatertreffen last week. But the director, Christopher Rüping, a regular at the festival who has been a prominent proponent of new digital possibilities for theater during the pandemic, decided to keep the live audience out. Instead of performing for a handful of spectators, the actors addressed cameras. The result, watched online, was a hybrid theatrical experience reminiscent of cinéma vérité.Roving hand-held cameras captured Jean-Luc Lagarce’s 1990 play about a gay man who returns to his estranged family after a long absence. Most impressive was how effective the livestream’s filming style was at capturing the nuances of the production’s fine actors, including Ulrike Krumbiegel as the nervous, broken matriarch and Wiebke Mollenhauer and Nils Kahnwald as a pair of emotionally scarred siblings.This was also the second year that Theatertreffen’s jury voted to adopt a quota system to ensure that at least half the productions would be directed by women or majority-female collectives. (A recent study by the European Theater Convention that surveyed 22 countries found that there are six men for every four women working in theater).Last year’s Theatertreffen program looked quite similar to earlier installments despite the marked increase in female-led productions. This time around, though, an unofficial feminist theme seemed to reflect the festival’s focus on female theatermakers.“NAME HER. In Search of Women+,” a 7½-hour multimedia performance-lecture, directed by Marie Schleef, about overlooked women throughout history.Hendrik LietmannBy far the most didactic was “NAME HER. In Search of Women+,” a 7½-hour multimedia performance-lecture, directed by Marie Schleef, about overlooked women throughout history. Standing in front of a triptych of large iPhone-like displays of biographical information, charts and videos, the actress Anne Tismer gave an engaging performance that, however heroic, did suffer on video. Watching her rattle off this A to Z of brilliant and unjustly ignored woman, it was hard not to imagine it would have had an entirely different immediacy and energy if experienced live.One of the most prominent female theatermakers in Germany, and a frequent presence at Theatertreffen, is Karin Beier, who leads the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. This year, her production of Rainald Goetz’s “Empire of Death” served up a savage indictment of America’s post-9/11 military adventures abroad and democratic degeneracy at home, and it was easily the grimmest thing at the festival. I couldn’t wait for the four-hour theatrical scream to end.After so many lengthy shows, I was also grateful for those that clocked in at little more than an hour. They provided a sense of intimacy that was missing from the more sprawling productions.One was Leonie Böhm’s internal monologue version of “Medea*,” Schauspielhaus Zurich’s second production at the festival, which worked best as a finely tuned psychological examination of one of world literature’s most famous villainesses. In it, the actress Maja Beckmann’s Medea struggles with how Euripides’ tragedy fates her to be a child murderer, and how history will forever judge her a monster.Staged in a large white tent, “Medea*” created an atmosphere of privacy that it shared with the festival’s most unusual entry, the fragile dance performance “Scores That Shaped Our Friendship,” a physically tender exploration of the friendship between Lucy Wilke, a performer with spinal muscular atrophy, and Pawel Dudus, a queer Polish artist and dancer.Maja Beckmann in Leonie Böhm’s internal monologue version of “Medea*” from Schauspielhaus Zurich.Gina FollyDespite the quota system, this year’s Theatertreffen featured only one conventional play by a female playwright that was also directed by a woman: Anna Gmeyner’s “Automatenbüfett.”We have the Burgtheater in Vienna and the director Barbara Frey to thank for the rediscovery of this 1932 play by the Austrian-Jewish Gmeyner. In it, she combines folk realism with symbolic elements for a parable-like tale of the common good undermined by avarice and sexual dependency, set largely in a vending-machine restaurant. The automat dominates the drab set of Frey’s dramatically incisive and impeccably acted production.It is far and away the most traditional production in this Theatertreffen, as well as one of the best. Starting late this month, it will again be seen onstage in Vienna, where theaters have just reopened after half a year of hibernation. More