The really interesting things are negotiated on this premiere evening in the comedy in the Bayerischer Hof during the break: While Günther Maria Halmer is still on stage in the play “Four Star Hours” by Daniel Glattauer as the aging successful writer Frederic Trömerbusch and Janina Hartwig as the ambitious cultural journalist Mariella Brem argued about what one can still remember or no longer want to remember, the conversation during the break revolves almost exclusively around a different topic (and completely different memory gaps): The evening before, Thomas Pekny, head of the private boulevard stage, 51 Percent of his shares in René Heinersdorff.
Pekny is still 49 percent owner, but he has passed the management of the house to the Rhinelander Heinersdorff, director of the Theater an der Kö, the Theater am Rathaus in Essen and the Theater am Dom in Cologne. Pekny was acquitted in June for sexual abuse by the Munich Regional Court for lack of evidence, but still controversial. His reputation – and with it that of comedy – was permanently damaged.
“That was the only way to go,” says actor Heio von Stetten, commenting on the change at the top of the theater. After all, it’s about the house, so you have to act pragmatically and “don’t hang around for long” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/. “That had to happen,” says Swiss actress and director Pia Hänggi. Now you can finally enter the theater again with a clear conscience.
In her case, it is even the first time after the corona-related lockdown that she has set out from Pullach to go to the theater. On the one hand, she has known and appreciated “Janina” for many years, including from the ARD series “Um Himmels Willen”. On the other hand, she trained “Florian”. And of course she wanted to see how he’s doing tonight.
The keyword “Me Too” comes up
It’s something like an internal industry meeting that takes place here. We know each other, as well as the author Daniel Glattauer, whose comedies “Gut gegen Nordwind” and the “Miracle Exercise” were also shown in the comedy. Above all, however, you also know the predicament that you get into as an actor and actress when you are torn between contractual obligations and financial existential requirements on the one hand and your private rejection and personal integrity on the other.
Not everyone is as good in the stage and television business as Jutta Speidel, Michaela May and Pascal Breuer, who publicly announced that they no longer wanted to perform under this artistic director even before Pekny’s resignation became known. He can only welcome “that the shadows of these events, these me-too incidents, have now been cleared and the actors have a new chance to continue playing”, says director Andreas Herzog (“Usedom-Krimi”), expressing his relief for many .
51 percent versus 49: Not an easy constellation
How it goes on? “Not an easy constellation when one company owns 51 percent and the other 49 percent counteracts it,” speculates a specialist – Christiane Brammer is the director of the Hofspielhaus, also a private venue and the sole owner of a GmbH there.
You wish Heinersdorff a “huge success” with his company. And hope that he will be able to rebuild the house. “I find the last sentence of the piece very apt”, says Brammer. At this point in time, the interview battle between Halmer and Hartwig on stage had long since gotten out of hand, and the interviewees of the “Sternstunden” event series crumbled each other. Inspired by wine, Halmer alias Trömerbusch leaves the stage in a true actor’s show, not without shouting to the audience: Let’s just not do what is expected.