Scandal in Hamburg. Caspar David Friedrich’s most famous painting, “The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,” is a fake. At least the one that is currently being shown in the completely overcrowded Friedrich retrospective in the Kunsthalle. The original belongs to the Warburg Bank, which is the one with the Cum Ex scandal. And their director, or rather his wife, just destroyed it. On the stage of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus. Stumbling and reaching into the picture, it was done. All of Hamburg laughed their heads off about it. Of course, everyone wanted to be part of the dramatic investigation into the biggest tax evasion scandal in years, in which even the Chancellor is involved with some memory lapses. Even if it only happened with the means of performing arts, even as a comedy.
“The Glass City” is the name of the funny financial piece that Felicia Zeller devised from the facts about the Cum-Ex frauds (with a few borrowings from Gogol’s “Revisor”). In the case of the real transfer payment – just as a reminder – bankers, investors and tax lawyers received around 4.5 billion euros refunded from the German tax authorities in 429 cases by engaging in “dividend stripping”. During an interrogation, the head of the Warburg Bank, Christian Olearius, is said to have mentioned the illegal procedure in which enormous tax advantages were swindled from the deception about share sales, whether they were with (cum) or without (ex) dividends.
In this fun work, anything of substance was relegated to the program booklet
Olearius, who runs his traditional bank within shouting distance of the theater, played Lina Beckmann in the premiere of Zeller’s essentially insane crime scene report. Not that anyone recognized her before she first raised her hoarse voice. The exquisite disfigurement of all participants by the theater’s team of make-up artists (Susan Kutzner, Julia Christine Christiani, Mathilda Egels, Laura Groh, Isabel König, Elisa Zarniko) gave the audience no chance to reveal the truth. The highly acclaimed actress, who played almost all the main roles in the theater, looked like Horst Schlämmer’s father with a bald forehead. This disguise of greed as a gag business gave designer Ilka Giliga general authority.
Other conspirators against tax justice appeared as perfect copies of Evelyn Hamann in a doctor’s sketch (Ute Hannig), Heinz Strunk as a real estate slut (Jan Thümer) or Boris Becker in the body color of Donald Trump’s tanning cream (Yorck Dippe). The financial enlightener (Eva Maria Nikolaus) sang a proof aria as a soprano potpourri with the climax of Mozart’s Queen of the Night as the biggest laugh. The crazy lawyer (Christoph Jöde) played “Better Call Saul” with more slapstick. And the tiger head’s stumbling role in “Dinner for One” took over the third step of the stairs to the ship’s bridge, where people consistently slipped. Because the whole drama about the good society of financial fraud took place in the belly of a rusty container ship, with references to the spatial comedy of Anna Viebrock (stage: Zita Schnábel).
The second part gets rather slow with “Go get a beer”.
Yes, Viktor Bodo’s interpretation of the serious and still far from over scandal, in which all prejudices about unscrupulous financial capitalists and forgetful politicians were confirmed, became a dividend strip in humor history. That’s why the almost three-hour evening was a very funny entertainment, which was given a standing ovation by an appreciative audience, but not a good comedy. Convincing satire on real events gives the transgressions a special sharpness and clarity through exaggeration. However, in this fun work, anything substantial or revealing was relegated to the program booklet.
On stage, all the elements of the scandal appeared to be recognizable, but unfortunately not all that similar. Maybe that’s too much to ask if you remember Olaf Scholz’s boring confessions of partial amnesia or the boring remorse of confessed financial criminals. But by the second part of the evening at the latest, a sprawling coke party with Ballermann hits like “Go get a beer, you’ll get ugly again”, the actual fun became rather slow.
In this caricature of broker excesses, the story about a scandalous network of business and politics that redistributed national wealth in the Cum-Ex affair according to an alleged “diabolical plan” was exhausted in a silly costume party. Nice gags like the destroyed Caspar David Friedrich picture, which almost alone has to promote the label “city of culture” in Hamburg marketing, didn’t change the fact that the critical dividend of this production was more ex than cum.