Who hasn't heard of Struwwelpeter by Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann, pediatrician and humanist? A masterpiece of "black pedagogy", it has been haunting children's rooms since 1845 and has traumatized generations with the burning Paulinchen, Hanns Guck-in-die-Luft, Soup-Kaspar and their fellow sufferers! Two ingenious Englishmen, Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, together with the London cult band The Tiger Lillies, revisited the material a few years ago. The result is a grotesquely macabre adaptation in which Hoffmann's verses have been further sharpened with black humor and wild images, paired with a wild musical mixture of moritat, blues and circus band - a real junk opera. Look forward to a multi-award-winning, shrill and humorous evening between poetic fairy tale and pedagogically completely incorrect fairground horror show!
Bruno Max (director of the Theater zum Fürchten) on "Shockheaded Peter"
At a time when Hanns Guck-in-die-Luft was still simply allowed to run into the wall and Zappel-Phillipp was not given Ritalin but a "healthy slap", when the word "child psychologist" was still unknown and pedagogy was still in its much too narrow infancy, a well-meaning Doctor Hoffmann wrote an educational picture book that awakens scary and traumatic memories in generations of German-speaking children: Struwwelpeter, which was used for 150 years to discourage children from lighting fires and to encourage them to sit still. Thank goodness we are a step ahead in terms of education today and are more concerned about the little ones' souls than toughening them up against the unpredictable brutalities of the unpredictable evil world. But perhaps this world was also easier to survive when children were simply told: if you play with matches, you will burn alive; if you don't eat your soup, you will become skinny and die.
But even darker than the child psychology of Doctor Hoffmann is the musical (sorry, the "junk opera") by the Tiger Lillies, this quirky, very English, very poetic band that we have already had the pleasure of welcoming to the Stadttheater twice for a concert.
SHOCKHEADED PETER © Theater zum Fürchten
The many little educational horror stories are drawn even further into the fatal-macabre, the setting between circus, cabaret and panopticon underlines the not really very child-friendly core message: whether it's a soup puff, a riot, a fidget spinner or a matchbox: If you're not good, it ALWAYS ends lethal in the most bizarre way possible! (And if, for once, you are a good boy, you might be too).
Marcus Ganser stages a firework display of grotesque horror stories, Bela Fischer provides the musical direction and the unleashed band to go with it, Martyn Jacques, frontman of the Tiger Lillies, has provided around a dozen bittersweet songs in his inimitable style ... it's definitely going to be behaviorally conspicuous fun.
Can you still buy the classic Struwwelpeter as a book, or has it already been "canceled"? In any case, the hardcore version will be live and in all colors from poison green to blood red!
Playing: Katrin Fuchs, Teresa Renner, Bettina Soriat; Leopold Dallinger, Georg Hasenzagl, Georg Kusztrich, music: Béla Fischer jr, Sigi Finkel, Hartmut Kamm, Robert Pistracher, Fritz Rainer
Premiere: March 9, 2024
Further performance days: March 14, 16, 17, 19, 21 and 23, 2024
stadttheatermoedling.at
Theater zum Fürchten
Theater zum Fürchten is the largest independent theater conglomerate in Austria. Founded in 1987 by Bruno Max, the TzF theaters now offer around ten high-quality and extravagant in-house productions from the classics to the modern at four venues (Theater Scala with Scalarama, Stadttheater Mödling and Theater im Bunker) every year. A particular focus is on works of Anglo-Saxon and Elizabethan literature, around a third of which are premieres and first performances. The productions are usually shared between Theater Scala, which was founded in 1995, and its sister theater, Stadttheater Mödling, which was founded in 1998.
www.theaterzumfuerchten.at
