The trailer on the Bavarian State Theater homepage only lasts 37 seconds. That’s enough to see that something with fantastic images and great emotions is coming to the stage of the Residenztheater. “Andersen’s Tales” is the name of the production, which premieres this Saturday. She is special in several ways. Or, as Almut Wagner, chief dramaturge and deputy director of the house, says: “It is an extraordinary work.” And this is not only due to the effort involved, but also because of who it is intended for: namely for everyone from the age of ten.
The story of this production begins with director Philipp Stölzl, whose warm-hearted style is known in Munich from “The Legacy” and “James Brown wore curlers”. Wagner says he had the idea of combining the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen and his own biography into a stage story. But that’s not all: the text that Stölzl wrote with Jan Dvořák for this premiere was accompanied by music composed by Jherek Bischoff. The result was a musical theater piece that premiered at the Theater Basel in 2019 and combined the genres of drama, opera and ballet. From the beginning it was planned that the production would come to Munich, so that state director Andreas Beck would take it with him from his old place of work in Basel to his new one.
This individual move took a little longer, the pandemic intervened. They waited, the production was so big that they wanted to be sure they could play it in front of a full house, says Wagner. Because the Bavarian State Theater is not a multi-disciplinary theater, “Andersen’s Tales” was also reworked. The musical arrangement has become smaller, roles that were once taken on by opera singers are now taking on double roles, says the chief dramaturg. This sharpens the piece in different places and opens up new references and levels.
“Andersen’s Tales” is now about Hans Christian Andersen himself. Born into poor circumstances in 1805, he fled his hometown of Odense to Copenhagen at the age of 15 and came into the care of Jonas Collin, the financial director of the Royal Theater. He took him in, supported him – and Andersen found friends in his children Louis and Edvard and even fell in love. On the one hand, the evening tells of this unfulfilled love for Edvard and takes the audience back to this Puritan time, to the eve of Edvard’s wedding to his Henriette. On the other hand, Stölzl, who also directs, has added a fairytale level. Andersen, who plays Moritz Treuenfels in Basel and Munich, talks on stage about the Little Mermaid or the Emperor without clothes or the girl with the matches – and thus initiates a change of scenery into this fantastic, dreamlike and nightmare world. Biography, invention, fairy tales are permanently intertwined.
The fact that “Andersen’s Tales” is coming out now is of course a conscious choice. In the run-up to Christmas, theaters like to put out a production for the whole family. However, this was no longer the case at the Residenztheater for a long time. Daniela Kranz last staged “Ronja Robber’s Daughter” in 2019, which was on the schedule for a long time. After that, nothing happened in the big house. Of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t and haven’t been any pieces that are specifically aimed at young audiences. There are the annual productions by the Resi youth club in the Marstall, which have always been very good, or the two-person play “Bitches” in the Schöne Aussicht. For those under 14 there was actually only “Ronja” and the primary school tour piece “Bee in the Head”.
This autumn and winter a double pack is being released for everyone aged ten and over. This is the labeling that the Residenztheater does. So it’s not a family atmosphere, but a clear invitation to younger people too. One is the hip, beautiful production “Reineke Fuchs” by Schorsch Kamerun, which premiered at the Marstall in October. The other is “Andersen’s Tales”, which are even accompanied by Sunday readings of Andersen fairy tales during Advent.
“Reineke Fuchs” was released in the Marstall in October – also for people aged ten and over.
(Photo: Sandra Then)
The fact that all of this exists is great. The range of artistically exciting theater evenings, which are also aimed at children and young people between the ages of ten and 14, can still grow in Munich. There is a gap that the Schauburg alone cannot fill. It would be wise to get this younger age group particularly excited about the stage. If you’ve often walked through the entrance to the Residenztheater when you’re ten or eleven, you’ll probably come back later with greater confidence.
Almut Wagner also sees it that way. “If you invite young people to engage with theater, it is, on the one hand, a benefit for the young people, but also an investment in all of our futures,” she says. The State Theater is working on this with the “Resi for All” program or now with school collaborations. The numbers show that there is demand: the share of tickets for pupils and students in the Residenztheater is 25 percent, says Wagner. So will there be more productions for younger people in the near future? “I would like to continue it because I think it is very important,” says the chief dramaturge. For the next season this means: “We are thinking a lot about what piece that could be.”
Andersen’s storiesPremiere: Saturday, November 18th, 7:30 p.m., www.residenztheater.de