2024-11-20 16:27:00
The young generation of playwrights prefers to deal with the trauma of their bachelorhood rather than bring current crisis material to the stage. To do this, he puts the old ones on the scene: Kästner, Fallada – and now also one of the best women’s novels of the ”Babylon Berlin” era.
As soon as the crisis really hits Germany, panic breaks out in company headquarters. And not only there, but also in the drama departments of theaters – as in 2007 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers - people enthusiastically search for the latest news on the economic crisis. Since the young generation of post-playwrights is more likely to process the trauma of graduation in boring texts rather than write a play about conflicts in the auto industry or agriculture, they fall back on tried-and-tested classics: the great novels about the economic crisis from 1930s.
Books like “Fabian or Walking with the Dogs” by Erich Kästner from 1931 or “The Little Man – What Now?” by Hans Fallada from 1932 are increasingly making their way onto the theater stage. We get to see the dark social landscape of the interwar period, which we now know very well thanks to successful series like “Babylon Berlin”: an explosive mixture of social misery, nihilistic decadence and political violence. In the midst of all this there are small collaborators such as Jakob Fabian or Johannes Pinneberg, who are overwhelmed by the whirlwind of events.
It’s no longer just Kästner and Fallada who celebrate their return to the theater with their crisis novels. At the beginning of last year the Burgtheater in Vienna staged the now forgotten novel “The Natives of Maria Blut”, written by Maria Lazar in exile in 1935. This meant that not only was there a woman among the men of the authors , but that the focus was also on the province rather than, as often happens, on the parade giant of Berlin. And who knows if “The Rescue” by Anna Seghers, written in 1937, will soon end up on a playwright’s desk?
With “An ornament for the club. The one from Munich has a novel about smoking, sport, love and selling Residence Theatre now one of the best novels, because the language is so refined and clear, about inflationary Germany of the time. As a film at the beginning reveals, this book was written by a young woman: the author Marieluise Fleißer was born in 1901 and her only novel was published in 1931. At that time she entered Brecht’s circle with pieces such as “Purgatory in Ingolstadt,” and later Fassbinder, Kroetz and Jelinek became his admirers.
Barbie in the Babel of sin
With just five actors, director Elsa-Sophie Jach, born 90 years after Fleißer and 60 years after the novel’s publication, shows the depths
The idea of telling a story on stage is not really supported by the trendy aesthetics of dollhouses, such as those found in Ersan Mondtag, Lucia Bihler or Pınar Karabulut. There are simply no historical or other references, let alone on the metaphorical level, and even contrasted with the abysmal events it simply seems too harmless and one-dimensional. A trend that only looks good on Instagram. Luckily, this evening Jach can count on his great actors, who will move cheerfully on stage.
Especially Thomas Lettow, who gives protagonist Gustl Gillich the height needed to fall. Gillich is a man of the community. Someone who has an ear and a word for everyone in his tobacco shop, who not only wins medals in the swimming club, but also is a leader in every work assignment, who has already saved several people from drowning. Someone you rely on. And someone who is used to recognition and success, even from women. Lettow sometimes winks at the audience, sometimes with a jovial look, making him Gillich’s ally.
But Gillich finds himself in troubled waters that drag him down. The new shop, with which he wanted to break away from his tyrannical mother (Katja Jung), is no longer open. Others in the club win medals and a young competitor swims away from him. And he grits his teeth at Frieda Geier. She is one of the new women who work and smoke but don’t get married. Unlike Fleißer himself, she cannot be employed in the company as temporary unpaid help. Liliane Amuat as Frieda looks into the distance as a loner instead of ingratiating herself with the audience.
Even though Gustl knows that the more a drowning person squirms in panic, the faster he sinks, he does exactly that: he squirms. And what attracted him to Frieda, her independence, is now almost unbearable for him. “His daily economic life teaches him that he needs another woman,” they say, and now he wants to make another woman – or destroy her. Or, when even this turns out to be more difficult than expected, at least for his little sister, who lives in the monastery. Vassilissa Reznikoff plays Linchen with enchanting impassivity, somewhere between tragedy and comedy.
The tobacco merchant Gustl, driven mad by the crisis and inflation, remains a contradictory character in Fleißer’s destructive rage. He also stops the troubled unemployed Scharrer (Thomas Hauser) from carrying out a revenge murder attempt. Once again he is the hero of the community. And he is once again the big shot of the club. This is one of the paradoxes that manifests itself in “An Ornament for the Club”: the more Gustl feels forced to ruthlessly assert his own interests, the more he gives up on himself and finds himself with the “law of the pack”, as Fleißer says.
Nazis do not appear in “An Ornament for the Club”, but a deconsecrated Jewish cemetery does. You don’t need brown shirt marches to document the social devastation that followed German fascism. The warning about historical consequences is of less interest today than the precise and merciless description of the circumstances that cause flourishing peoples to wither like the first frost. “Everyone weaves a pattern that is woven into the present, but not yet read. Only the future will bring the true meaning,” says Fleißer.
economic recession
For Fleißer the inflationary period is also a shock of moral devaluation that spreads into everyday life in a barely perceptible way. A decline in human relationships that is felt more clearly today, at least after the Corona crisis. A transition period that Antonio Gramsci defined as the “Time of Monsters”. “These are no longer small-time employees and vendors,” the piece states. “These are the rampaging barbarians of the small town who shout the present formula of their salvation into the ears of those who are not called.”
You can watch the characters swim with and against the current in the stage pool for nearly two hours. Then the concept is not convincing – which struggles to find its own visual language for the events, but does not drown the curious gesture of the original in current knowledge – but even more so the material. With “An Ornament for the Club”, Fleißer joins Fallada, Kästner and Lazar when it comes to exceptional inflation and crisis novels suitable for the stage. And now I’m in business at the theater while the economy is collapsing.
How does the production highlight the connection between individual struggles and societal tensions?
Tery serves as a backdrop, hinting at the societal and political tensions simmering beneath the surface. The characters grapple not only with personal crises but also with the realization that their lives are deeply intertwined with a changing social landscape that they cannot escape. Fleißer’s work, along with the production’s thoughtful direction, sheds light on the fragility of human dignity during times of crisis.
With a deft combination of humor and tragedy, the performance invites audiences to reflect on the deeper implications of individual actions against the broader backdrop of historical events. It underscores how, in desperate times, communities often cling to familiar structures and roles, even as they may perpetuate cycles of misery and violence.
An Ornament for the Club not only revives a forgotten voice from the past but also creates a striking commentary on modern societal challenges, making it relevant to contemporary audiences grappling with similar issues of identity, power, and economic turmoil. As theatergoers witness Gustl’s journey, they may find echoes of their own struggles reflected on stage, prompting necessary conversations about the nature of progress and the perils of complacency in the face of adversity.