We humans are usually not afraid of death because we can’t really imagine it anyway, but we are afraid of dying. Cancer-stricken Rosa Lüders, a simple woman, played in an outstandingly unpretentious manner by Gisa Kümmerling, is different.
Brave, with humor and the irrepressible will to enjoy her last days and weeks in the hospice, she always invites Lothar Kellermann for a cigarette – she only wants to give up the pleasure of smoking last. And Lothar, who has also been diagnosed with cancer and has a place in the hospice, gratefully accepts. The always planning and well-organized businessman has given up his former life, sold his house and his company and adapts somewhat awkwardly to his fate. Nenad Zaniæ gives the man who unintentionally falls in love with Rosa lovable contours, although his supposed friend and colleague Manfred – played by Udo Prucha as an insecure but honest proletarian – is rehearsing a fairly realistic eulogy, because Lothar has “no idea what’s going on in other people”. That is now changing. Rosa and Lothar often meet up in the smoking corner, and when the construction noise from the street next door gets too loud, Rosa yells: “Quiet! People are dying here. Lothar is dying here”.
The title of the piece, after her award-winning film of the same name, is one of the strokes of genius of author Ruth Toma. Ralf Hocke staged the tragic comedy for the Eduard von Winterstein Theater in an entertaining way, Annette Mahlsdorf provided the equipment with simple, variably illuminated partition walls and superimposed film recordings that breathe additional life into the sparse stage.
Rosa also ensures that Lothar finds new courage to face life. First by giving her loads of Moroccan tiles from his old company – although he doesn’t like Moroccans at all. He is also skeptical about management consultants such as his daughter Mira and her friend Ansgar.
When it turns out that he is not suffering from cancer at all, misdiagnosis, he has to completely reorganize his life and thus has a real problem that even drives him to the brink of suicide. He is looking for more contact with his daughter Mira – Mira Sanjana Sharma, who hides her insecurities towards her suddenly changed father behind a helpless smile a little too often – warns her about her boyfriend Ansgar. He is “boring, stiff and distant” – which Vladislav Weis sometimes plays a bit too caricatured. Mira separates from Ansgar, who Lothar now takes care of, but that doesn’t really convince in terms of play.
In the end, however, everything turns out reasonably well. Even Lothar’s doctor Annette Lachmann – Marie-Louise von Gottberg as initially rather sober administrator of the dying in the hospice – brings back the tiles that he had given away after Rosa’s death. Lothar is now an employee in his former company and moves into a new small apartment, where everyone involved meets for the housewarming party – including the deceased Rosa, who is now a little helpless on the sidelines.
“Silence! Here Lothar dies” is an original, life-affirming tragic comedy that understands death as a part of life. In passing, as it were, she touches on questions and decisions that affect everyone. Can you fall in love again in the face of death? Can you fundamentally change your life again in old age? The meaning of life is that it is finite – and that puts people before decisions. In the end, Lothar says to his daughter Mira: “Life is too short to spend it with someone you don’t really love.” And everyone got a glimpse of what that means.
The production does not always strike a balance between tragedy and comedy. The mourning for Rosa, who, unlike Lothar, died, is almost lost in the somewhat sweet ending. Ansgar, as a reformed neoliberal management consultant, is just as unconvincing as Mira is about her philosophy of life. Carefully selected music – from the empathetic singer-songwriter Passenger to Simon & Garfunkel to the age-wise Chip Taylor – again underlines the cautious plea for finite life. And Chip Taylor’s hit “Fuck all the perfect people” could also be the motto for the play, which is about imperfect people like all of us – but who all deserve their chance.
The next performances from “Silence! Lothar dies here” is on October 22nd and 30th in the Eduard-von-Winterstein-Theater Annaberg-Buchholz.