What helps against the eternal corona blues? A stylishly executed murder is not the worst antidepressant, at least if the murder takes place on the Orient Express, staged by Katharina Thalbach and performed with her friends on the revue stage of a Berlin boulevard theater. Thalbach, the expert of a charmingly over-the-top folk theater, immerses the Agatha Christie nostalgia in colorful retro pop and inspires it all with happy self-irony, thump and vocal interludes. The costumes of the fashion designer (and old Thalbach friend) Guido Maria Kretschmer shimmer with rhinestones and with joy in show and glamor, all quotations from the show and fashion worlds around 1920, as it should be in the revue with increased bang effect.
The most beautiful moment of this evening full of beautiful moments is perhaps the first when Thalbach in Hercule Poirot’s costume steps in front of the red theater curtain on the stage of the Schiller Theater. Before she can introduce herself with a very funny French accent that sounds like Berlin (“I am Hercule Poirot, the greatest detective in the world and immensely vain …”), she is greeted with warm applause. This is what the joy of seeing you again sounds like and the relief that things will somehow continue with the theater in general and the Thalbach Theater in particular. The visibly touched Thalbach beamed into the audience, the audience beamed back at least as happy. And by the way, most of them know or suspect that the future of the largest and oldest boulevard theater in the country will probably depend on this premiere.
It was precisely at this theater that Katharina Thalbach’s furious directing career began 34 years ago
Because the Sause in Berlin’s Schiller Theater was not produced by one of the highly subsidized state theaters, but by the comedy on Kudamm. The private theater has to earn 85 percent of its budget at the box office. Just for comparison: at state theaters it is around 20 to 25 percent. The loss of ticket revenue in lockdown threatened the existence of the tabloid theater. The Thalbach premiere, with production costs of around one million euros, the largest and most expensive production that the theater has ever dared, should have come out at the beginning of the first lockdown. In the middle of the home straight, shortly before the premiere, the pandemic brutally stopped the Orient Express. Since then the theater has been on hold.
If you ask Martin Wölffer, the crisis-tested director and the third generation operator of the Kudamm comedy, how he survived the pandemic year without theater or income, you get a tired sigh, but then immediately a very clear sentence: “I don’t want me Politicians, especially the Berlin Senator for Culture, helped us very quickly and decisively. You can write that. I don’t know whether we would still be there without Klaus Lederer’s commitment. ” A general manager who doesn’t moan, but thanks politicians and just somehow bravely carries on! He only says that he had to reduce his salary significantly last year when you ask him about it – that’s no reason to complain, the main thing is that it continues.
You can also learn otherwise from Martin Wölffer how decency works. The level of prominence in the “Orient Express” ensemble is quite different, but everyone gets the same fee. Everyone works hard and lively together. Thanks to the good ventilation system, Wölffer could have sold tickets for all seats in the auditorium; he urgently needed the money. But because many tickets were sold in advance and the buyers assumed the rules of distance in the stalls, the theater asked its visitors whether they would agree to the auditorium being fully occupied. The reaction was clear: please don’t. Wölffer takes its audience seriously, so for reasons of hygiene and space there were many empty seats in the parquet. The theater can only sell around 500 tickets per performance instead of around 1,000, but the audience does not feel uncomfortable and is more secure from infection.
The whole splendor of the boulevard in the set by Momme Röhrbein.
(Photo: Franziska Strauss / Franziska Strauss)
Thalbach’s set designer Momme Röhrbein has conjured up a cleverly playful stage with funny gimmicks for the journey on the Orient Express, the luxurious wide-screen cinema dining car salon below, the wood-paneled sleeping cars above. Large locomotives protrude into the auditorium on the sides and provide model railroad amusement with their rotating wheels and spotlights aimed at the audience. The golden silk robes rustle, the entranced divas loll around in the armchairs of the dining car, Monsieur Bouc, the owner of the Orient Express operating company (Tobias Bonn) looks like Peter Alexander and sings like that, only more fun. The interestingly aged vamp Helen Hubbard, a blonde who gargles her whiskeys for breakfast and numbers her ex-husbands for a better overview, has the honor of being played by Christoph Marti with the most beautiful drag skills – great pleasure!
It is an evening of the Thalbach gang. Her daughter Anna Thalbach gives the adulteress Mary Debenham in love, her granddaughter Nellie Thalbach a dubious countess. Max Gertsch gives his conductor smooth charm, the wonderful Andreja Schneider plays her Russian princess as a dragon. Because good or at least funny looks are important in tabloid theater homicide investigations, the wigmakers had a lot to do: The hairstyles pile up into adventurous bird nests, the men’s beards effortlessly surpass any hipster beard.
The most beautiful beard, an artful mustache, naturally adorns Hercule Poirot, Agathe Christie’s quirky detective genius. As Poirot, Katharina Thalbach pushes the padded tummy in an old-fashioned black three-piece suit through the salon with dignity, twirls her beard tips with relish, lets melancholy moments run their course, blinks coquettishly like Charlie Chaplin and knows every moment how she will give the rampage queen of the hearts got to. Small sentimental footnote: Exactly at this theater, in the workshop of the Schiller Theater, Thalbach’s furious directing career began 34 years ago with Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” – Kathie is coming home! The future of the Kudamm comedy, which has been relocated to the Schiller Theater, should be secured for the time being: The “Orient Express” is sold out for weeks.