In the summer of 2025, the Schloss-Spiele Kobersdorf will embark on the hunt for happiness. The famous folk play "Tales from the Vienna Woods" by Ödön von Horváth tells the story. Intendant Wolfgang Böck embodies the role of the "Magic King".
Between Wachau and Vienna's Josefstadt, a touching drama unfolds around Marianne, the daughter of a peculiar doll clinic owner whom everyone calls the Magic King. Her attempt to escape from her engagement to the butcher Oskar into her supposed freedom with the Hallodri Alfred fails. In the end, the petty bourgeois trap snaps shut. At the premiere at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1931, none other than Hans Moser shone in the role of the Sorcerer King, later given an unmistakable profile by Helmut Qualtinger. Now Wolfgang Böck has finally joined the illustrious ranks of the magic kings, once again proving himself to be a character actor of the first rank. "I am delighted that we can conclude our diverse series of plays by Austrian authors and plays with an Austrian connection with the stories from the Vienna Woods. After the stirring Bockerer, the fairytale-like King of the Alps and a daring version of The Servant of Two Masters, we are now showing Horváth's humanly grounded masterpiece, whose characters all carry a great longing within them," says artistic director Wolfgang Böck. As director, Michael Gampe will stage the stories from the Vienna Woods with equal measures of clarity and sensitivity. In this play, the Austrian-born Ödön von Horváth (* 1901 in Rijeka, now Croatia, † 1938 in Paris) dissected far more than just the Austrian soul: he turned the universally human into great world theater.
Premiere: July 1, 2025
Further performances July 3 - 6; 10 to 13; 17 to 20; 24 to 27, 2025
www.schlossspiele.com