It is a cheerful game about the topic of the need for care, which in reality is anything but cheerful, which René Heinersdorff instigates in his farce “White Sneakers”. But at the premiere of the comedy in the Bayerischer Hof, the misfires of the main actor Jochen Busse led to an intertwining of theater reality and reality, which caused the audience exactly the consternation that they had actually wanted to lightly avoid in the play. What happened?
On stage, the 83-year-old Busse embodies the sprightly pensioner Günther, who is in impressively good shape, not only in the eyes of his neighbor and sports buddy Max (Florian Odendahl). In no time at all he climbs up to his apartment on the fifth floor. Once at the top, various exercise machines in the so-called “Matterhorn” encourage further training sessions. This Günter is not only literally as fit as a pair of sneakers, but also hoards them in pairs on the shelf, all white, of course, because in his sneakers he can effortlessly jump over every stream and puddle in the English Garden.
His son Kai (Claus Thull-Emden), on the other hand, is completely different, as he has to throw himself on the sofa to “gasp out” after climbing into his father’s apartment. He becomes even more breathless when he admits that he has lost the house on Prinzregentenstrasse that was signed over by his father due to the building speculations of a windy architect. And father and son find themselves in an extremely precarious situation in this nursing farce staged by Urs Schleiff.
Here Kai already has the next “bomb-proof” idea up his sleeve: of all people, the agile Günther, who has outlived his four wives, is supposed to pretend to be in need of serious care, level 4, in order to swindle money from the health insurance company. Reluctantly, he is sitting in the chair as a patient with supposed walking, vision, hearing and speech impairments when the expert from the Erfurt insurance company shows up at his door.
The examiner (Simone Pfennig) proves to be wonderfully hands-on and immediately settles herself in the apartment for 24-hour care. At some point in this confusion you suspect that the ad hoc nurse has long since seen through the tricks of father, son and neighbor. And is happy that in return she – together with Günther – is preparing a healing shock for his son. However, as mentioned at the beginning, it also came as a shock to the premiere audience.
Fit as the proverbial sneaker: Jochen Busse as the training-obsessed Günther, Florian Odendahl as his sports buddy Max.
(Photo: Jennifer Zumbusch/Komödie im Bayerischer Hof)
Because Busse, who had been performing splendidly up until then, firing off rapid monologues and punch lines and moving through candles, shoulder stands and “murderous flying foxes”, suddenly faltered and couldn’t get any further in the text. What the audience only gradually became aware of. Busse had already self-deprecatingly broken the fourth wall with the comment: “If I had known how strenuous this role would be, I wouldn’t have taken it on!”
Accordingly, many considered his words – “This is what I’ve always been afraid of” – to be scripted. And it took the presence of mind of his sparring partner Simone Pfennig to bring the performance to a happy end. Together they moderated Busse’s misfires as an “autoinfection” in which he “infected himself” with the perfect simulation of his condition requiring care. The audience rewarded the highly emotional performance with standing applause.
When asked at the weekend, director René Heinersdorff explained that Busse suffered from an acute migraine attack, but mastered the following performances flawlessly.
White sneakers, until April 7th, Comedy in the Bavarian Court