With his brilliant farce “Love Stories and Marriage Matters” (first performed in 1843, Theater an der Wien), Johann Nestroy composed an evergreen unmasking of profit-maximizers and schemers. In the Saturday premiere (director: Dominique Schnizer) in the Linzer Schauspielhaus, which was postponed for weeks due to corona, it became plausible which bloated excellences and speculation winners from the Biedermeier period are also lurking in the present.
The story hums like a greased engine on the way to the oath of disclosure. The marriage swindler Nebel is a nimble canaille, for whom love goes through the moneybag: Jan Nikolaus Cerha, in a precise mood to play, knows the comedy, the couplets that are initially too fast, including witty and topical additional stanzas (by the Paschinger poetry slammer Sarah Anna Fernbach), but also to interpret the evil of the role. Laptops are taken for a walk, Federal Chancellors are compared to dolphins and shredding campaigns, including purchased opinion polls, are sung through the meat grinder. “You think a lot, almost alarmingly, in the end it’s completely silent, stupid thinking is really something stupid.” That’s how you do the G’shift, even if you end up being the G’schnapste. Cleverly interwoven: the bizarre chamber music quartet with Joachim Werner (piano/melodica), Juan Sebastian Benavides (violin), Verena Merstallinger (guitar) and Anna Obiol Fibla (clarinet).
The particular von Fett, whose vocabulary and veneration for titles depend on the Selcher origin, becomes a spirit proletarian and emotional tyrant through the good Christian Higer, as is in the books of Nestroy. Horst Heiss polishes Marchese Vincelli to the aristocratic guardian of the Grail, who endures the rabble as a study of noblesse. Benedikt Steiner alone is worth seeing as Vincelli’s son Alfred. As if he had jumped out of a Tim Burton film, he struggles for Ulrike Liebe (Cecilia Pérez, Fett’s distant relative). Jakob Kajetan Hofbauer as Anton Buchner is just a bit too excitable when he courts Fett’s daughter Fanny. Lorena Emmy Mayer leaves no doubt about the chubby innocence of this Fanny, but she sometimes goes too far.
Lucia Distel, a prickly name for a mature woman in a wedding and love emergency – that’s exactly how Eva-Maria Aichner puts her on stage. Julian Sigl rarely remains as a brilliant host, but sometimes remains silent “like Pilnacek in the investigative committee”. And Katharina Hoffmann interprets his wife as a drinking Slav with a cheap past.
Sebastian Hufschmidt manages the trick of equipping each of his three servant roles with different colors.
The evening picks up speed on the revolving stage, which is put to excellent use by set designer Christin Treunert. The Biedermeier pomp draws the same grey-dark circles up to the tavern misery. Even with Nestroy, culture was not for sale. In the best case, it arises when education and humanity meet. A lack of education and greed reliably cause the opposite.
- Schauspielhaus Linz: “Love Stories and Marriage Matters”farce by Johann N. Nestroy, Director: Dominique Schnizer, Premiere: May 21, Events until 9. 7.
Source: Nachrichten
