The human creature behind a splintering luxury façade - what is authentic, what is fiction? A highly amusing play, adapted for the theater directly from the German Book Prize short list by pop director Stefan Pucher. The first-person narrator embarks on a bizarre road trip with his elderly mother: the unlikely pair travel by cab all over Switzerland - and at the same time into the depths of their own selves and into the abysses of their own family, whose history repeatedly intersects with the history of the country in tragic, comic and sometimes spectacular ways. From the apartment on Lake Zurich to the chalet in Gstaad, the journey rapidly descends into the depths of the personal and collective past. In the back seat is a plastic bag with an obscene amount of money - 600,000 francs in bills, withdrawn by the mother herself from her private bank in Zurich. From the apartment on the shores of Lake Zurich, which has been neglected by the wealthy, to the chalet in Gstaad, the journey rapidly descends into the depths of the personal and collective past. Always driven by the fervent desire to get rid of the dirty share profits from the arms industry as quickly as possible by squandering them and giving them away. A final journey together that brings mother and son together in a way that life has never managed. Right into the dark corners of the family's past, from the Springer tower block in Hamburg to the Nazi grandfather's villa on Sylt - or perhaps to the afterlife in Africa? The human creature behind a splintering luxury façade - what is authentic, what is fiction?
A highly amusing play with biographical details and an enchanting parody. Adapted for the theater directly from the short list of the German Book Prize by pop director Stefan Pucher. Star director Stefan Pucher has staged "pure, tender, almost ascetic theater" (NDR Kultur) with Christian Kracht's successful novel. The role of the mother is played by Barbara Nüsse, who, at almost 80 years old, is still one of the most important actresses in German-language theater.
May 11, 2023
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