So there they are, sitting side by side at a reading table and creating a picture of purposeful togetherness: Franz Xaver Kroetz and Marie Theres Relin, the once celebrated actor and poet with his ex. He, the 77-year-old: lounging extra casually, in casual clothes -Outfit of the wannabe young professional cool guy. Hats, colorful striped socks, sneakers with air soles (which she calls “high-heeled sneakers”). Cheeky Strizzi look and “He’s a dog” mustache. She, in contrast: sitting upright and highly concentrated, wearing a black, knee-short lace dress with a self-confident cleavage, her hair blown out, her expression serious. The only thing they have in common: the reading glasses.
The two were once the glamor couple of the tabloid press. He, the celebrated Baby Schimmerlos from the cult series “Kir Royal”, was one of the most popular playwrights of all time in the 1970s. She, the 20 years younger beauty from the famous acting family, mother Maria Schell, father Veit Relin. 16 years of marriage turning into hell. Three children. The divorce in 2006 was a mud fight. Until recently, they couldn’t even last ten minutes in the same room together, says Kroetz.
But now they have written a book, each for themselves and yet together, and this evening in the jam-packed Residenztheater they are presenting it in an “original reading”, as director Andreas Beck puts it in his welcoming speech: “Scenes from a Marriage”. The title is an allusion to the film drama by Ingmar Bergman, which the Swedish director himself staged on this Resi stage in 1981, only at the time it was really “Scenes from a Marriage”.
In Kroetz-Relin it is the notes of two divorced and failed people who set off together again to Tenerife, where they lived for years – but not to come to terms with the past. But, quite soberly, to bring Kroetz’s rickety Mercedes to Germany, which he doesn’t dare do on his own, which is why she has to accompany him on payment. The project takes weeks because the car still needs to be repaired.
A shared book, but everyone writes for themselves
The idea arises to write down their impressions during this time. Everyone for themselves, one page every day. She forces him to do what is good for him. In the resulting book, her texts are on the left-hand pages, and his much briefer texts are on the right (his are in typewriter font, because Kroetz doesn’t use a computer).
It has become a brutally honest book, that is its quality. The two pay nothing to each other when describing their own defeats and the perception of each other. Kroetz is the more accomplished and meaner author, that is clear, and also the more confident reader. He turns it into little dramatic numbers, full of self-irony and humor, earning laughs and applause when he reports on his blockages, his painful attempts to “fail better” or describes Relin as an annoying “hobby nurse”: “She places me between the cemetery and the retirement home .”
People have completely forgotten what beautiful Bavarian he speaks. He coquettishly calls himself an “oid macho,” as if that excuses the sexist poison injections against “the ex,” as he calls Relin in his texts: “Even though she’s fat, she’s still pretty sexy.” The audience laughs with the necessary indignation.
In her descriptions he appears as a sniveling old man
Relin sits there unmoved, someone hardened by years of fighting. She’s not as evil as him. But when she talks about his frailties and his annoying peeing while standing up, she gives it back to him in her womanly and brilliant way. It’s a matter of bickering, teasing and dishing out. Knees, asthma, prostate – in Relin’s descriptions, Kroetz appears as an old, mournful man. He knows it himself: “Old age is a massacre.”
He smirks and grimaces when Relin describes him as a “curmudgeon,” and he pats her lightly when she talks about failed job offers and self-critically admits how she, who has long since emancipated herself, is falling back into old role models as cook and caretaker: “I live his life as a free rider.”
Shortly before the end, Marie Theres Relin calmly and clearly, without any emotional fuss, reads out the chapter in which she tells of the early abuse by her famous uncle Maximilian Schell. This has a lot of impact. When they both stand there at the end and bow, they are equals. Two who, after all the fights and hate, still helped each other. This is also a kind of happy ending. Kroetz presses a kiss on his ex’s cheek. Huge applause. This two-person piece should be included in the repertoire.