British Plays in Germany

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 212, 26 November 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

British Plays in Germany

Critic on the Stage SHAKESPEARE AS THE GERMANS PREFER HIM The disarming of Berlin’s most powerful dramatic critic by putting him on the stage, complete down to his favourite pattern in socks, and every one of his many mannerisms, is the sensation of the new theatrical season. Both flattered and shocked at how others see him, Dr. Alfred Kerr has been very kind to the play, only gently urging the actor who impersonates him to make him a trifle more lovable, writes a correspondent in an English exchange.

But “Hocus-Pocus,” at the Komodienhaus, a new comedy in three acts with prologue and epilogue, would be a success even without him. The author, Curt Gotz, besides being a wit, is one of Germany’s best actors in Wilde comedies. Primed with stage experience, he satirises not only critics, but plays themselves. In the prologue he makes six people debate on whether a play—his play—just found in somebody’s desk, is by Pirandello or not. The plot itself is a burlesque of a detective story. A young wife is accused of the murder of her husband after going out with him in a pleasure boat and returning home alone. She is condemned on circumstantial evidence by the court, when the murderer himself appears, with a bunch of violets for the agonised widow. But the “murderer” is himself the husband, who, an unappreciated painter, evolved the brilliant idea that his picture would sell quite well after Uis death, more particularly if it were surrounded by mystery. He)has a hard task convincing the law, but as at one time of his artistic career he was an illusionist, the manner in which he slips the handcuffs closing over his own wrists on to the policeman’s brings the house down. The play, it will be seen, combines points from Mr. Shaw’s “Fanny’s First Play” (Prologue), and Mr. Arnold Bennett's “The Great Adventure.” A JAZZ BAND PLAY “Five from the Jazz Band,” by Felix Joachimson. is lighter fare still, to be taken seriously because it has been produced at the State Theatre. There are really only four members of the jazz-band when it stops to imbibe refreshment at the cafe kept in Brittany by Jessie, and her English father. But Jessie, to whom jazz means romance, is quite willing to follow the four as lady-player of the big drum, and just as willing to wear the smart frock two of the party steal for her from the wardrobe of a wealthy . guest at the hotel they play at that evening. As fifth wheel on the coach she is not so ready to carry out instructions; her struggles with the drum are a torture to the audience and ruination to the band. Moreover, the owner has recognised her dress. The four creep one by one to Jessie’s door to tell her so, and tell her, too, how pleasing she is otherwise. But because one girl to four men is bound to have her own way, Jessie, unable to choose between them, departs next morning to her cafe and takes up life again where she left it. FALSTAFF AND TROILUS

Plays of Galsworthy, Shaw and Shakespeare occupy the places In Berlin’s theatres once taken by German classics. Reproaches enough have been levelled at managers for not putting on one play of Sudermann during the week when all Germay was doing him honour for his seventieth birthday. • A version of “Henry the Fourth” in the Lessing Theatre, both parts in one, and -whole speeches cut in the scenes left, is having a great success. The honours of Falstaff, to whom the adaptors have been most generous, keep the audience in a roar. More un-Shakespearean still is the performance of “Troilus and Cresida” in the Deutsches Theater. A new translation by Hans Rothe serves to emphasise a modern trend hitherto undiscovered in Troilus. There is doubt about the fact that a translator who ventures the tender and familiar “Du” and the stiffer “Sie” of modern German instead of the archaic “Ihr” of old classic style has helped the audience at the outset to accept the poet as one who indeed wrote for all time. The actors play their classic parts very much in the style of well-known ; military types on the German stage. ' Either “Troilus” was a very clever choice to present to German audiences, or the German producer recognised its I present-day possibilities. Xo more up-to-date play dealing with post-war con- ! ditions has been given in Berlin for a long time.