University of Virginia Library

Larger-Than-Life

German Play Termed Success

By Frederick Lehmeyer

—ed.

In their first appearance here at
the University on Saturday night
the Westdeutsches Tourneetheater
of Remscheid made "a palpable
hit" with their production of
Kleist's "Der zerbrochene Krug."
The company plays almost exclusively
for university audiences and
the somewhat slower pacing of the
piece as well as larger-than-life
stylized acting (plus a generous
amount of mugging) were deliberately
intended to help make the
work clearer to those whose native
language is not German. In this way
they were eminently successful.
Indeed, the entire production suggested
nothing so much as a comic
opera without music.

Despite the fact that there was
virtually no set the troupe managed
well within five minutes to transform
the stage of Cabell Hall into
an eighteenth century Dutch genre
painting by the use of makeup and
costuming. Especially clever was
the constant slipping on and off of
heavy wooden shoes in order to add
"corroborative detail intended to
lend artistic verisimilitude."

The individual performers were,
for this style of acting, uniformly
excellent and of particular note is
the absolute clarity of diction on
everyone's part. Wilhelm Michael
Mund imparted to the role of Adam
just the right note of Baurnschlaue
to make the part comically effective.
His transparent subterfuges
would be clear to anyone who
spoke no more German than an
Irish cop.

Blana Blacha as the widow
Frau Marthe Rull showed the
acerbity proper to the old peasant
Dutch woman and Gunther Dicks
as the Gerichtsrat Walther had both
the aristocratic bearing the part
requires as well as a pleasant tenor
voice which made an admirable foil
to Mund's rasping baritone.

Perhaps the most winning of all
were Rose Haas and Harold
Eglinger as the young girl Eve and
her lover, the handsome but stupid
Ruprecht.
Pink-and-white-pretty-pretty, they
might have stepped right out of a
road company production of the
"Red Mill." We should also make
note of Joachim Konrad's portrayal
of the clerk Licht. His eyes
red-rimmed from over zealous attention
to his duties and with a
scholarly stoop induced by much
bending over his desk, he made the
character come strikingly alive.

As a final bouquet we should
mention that the company, making
a virtue of necessity in that Cabell
Hall has no curtain, began the
performance in the seventeenth-century
French fashion by
sounding the traditional three
knocks. With regard to this performance
we have no knocks of our
own.