Which faith applies within the afterlife?: “The Winged Frog God” within the German Theater

Nicely, how does it really work within the afterlife? Are there binding requirements – within the sense of a “superpower that stands above all else”? And in that case: “What standards would one use to search out out which faith is the one that’s actually legitimate within the afterlife?” That’s what the only actor asks in Ingrid Lausund’s new play “The Winged Frog God”. The explanation for the individual in query to spend 25 pages pragmatically circling critical questions of transcendence is simply as explicitly drawn from on a regular basis life as your complete character: she misplaced her beloved life accomplice a couple of years in the past and has been questioning how – and the place – each day since then – she or he is properly. Heaven or Hell? As we all know, you’ll be able to’t go any decrease than that for those who’re blown away by the final issues.

Lausund really wrote the monologue twice – with minimal variations; relying on whether or not the deceased was a person or a girl. The previous seems within the reminiscence on the marriage day with a bouquet of roses within the native pizzeria, the latter lovingly surprises the married individual with, properly, a cordless screwdriver. In his premiere on the Kammerspiele of the Deutsches Theater, director FX Mayr made the nice resolution to merge each variations, reduce their stereotypical content material and still have the textual content carried out in a duet. This ensures a welcome change of temperature and temperament within the ninety-minute night occasion, the textual content of which is known in a short time.

Ingrid Lausund writes on Pointe

That is an I who’s deliberately alien to the discourse and breathes the sentence out of virtually each pore: I’m consciously naive – however not silly! A self that develops its chains of argument about God and the world all of the extra forcefully from on a regular basis understanding and reliably catches each abstraction that threatens to quickly escape with its buying bag. Right here, ideas of transcendence are rejected as a result of one – key phrase favourite pizzeria – lacks the flexibility to think about what a “transcended pizza” ought to appear to be. The truth that a creator expects a certain quantity of recognition for his achievements is instantly apparent to this self – in spite of everything, he already desires to be praised for his “self-made fruit bowl”.

As a substitute of recent ones of our personal, there may be extra of a low-threshold affirmation of outdated insights which might be completely value affirming, similar to people who theater followers already know from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: No faith is above the opposite. Ingrid Lausund, who obtained the Grimme Prize twice for her scripts for the tv sequence “The Crime Scene Cleaner” written beneath the pseudonym Mizzi Meyer, writes expressly with wit and punchlines. Anybody who doesn’t share her humorousness – within the premiere viewers, those that snigger are in all probability on a par with those that don’t maintain a straight face – received’t have a simple time with the “Winged Frog God”.

It additionally helps right here that director FX Mayr removes the night from real looking impressions as a lot as doable and has the duet companions Regine Zimmermann and Bernd Moss seem, for instance, in spectacular crinoline outfits illuminated in lemon yellow (costumes and stage: Korbinian Schmidt). There was by no means any doubt that the required keyboard was mastered and performed confidently by each ensemble members. A choreographic quartet additionally supplies selection between the scenes: a sort of leitmotif transcendent intermezzo. The night and its guests all the time imply properly: Shortly earlier than the top there may be beer and pretzels for everybody.