Theater-“Tach, Tristesse!”: Traces of a GDR star

The theater is currently experiencing a violent wave of musicalization. The Deutsche Theater Berlin, under the directorate of Ulrich Khuon, made the thoughts of the anarchist Max Stirner mutating into a musical, Marxen’s “capital” was pressed into this form at the Theater Dortmund and at the spectacle Frankfurt “Solaris” by Stanisław Lem. Performance shooting star Florentina Holzinger has created a Frankenstein musical with her recent work “A Year Without Summer”, and the direction of Yael Ronen can become a template for a musical from the excitement topic Cancel Culture to the collective trauma after October 7, 2023.

How seriously the artists mean or how much irony resonates is a legitimate question. In any case, the theater encounters the problems of the present (which may rather have the conditions for large tragedies?) At least formally with the means of the light muse.

Now the Märkische Strausberg is not Berlin, Dortmund, Frankfurt. But what the stages there can be can also be found here. A prefabricated musical with the title “Tach, Tristesse!” (Director: Paul Spittler) inspired by Françoise Sagan celebrated its premiere last Friday at the other world.

Teenager Evi goes on vacation in the record in Strausberg with her mother. “WBS 70, a GDR star” says one of the songs. Melody, rhythm, that sounds not very exciting at first, especially for Evi. However, Cilly uses the opportunity to visualize her own prefabricated construction youth in the mid-1990s and to share the memories with her daughter and the audience.

At that time, Cilly had just lost her mother. Like many, her father, driver Jürgen, threatens unemployment during this time. Her gay best friend is to be deported to the civil war -destroyed Bosnia. And Ronny, with whom she begins to bend, turns out to be a neo -Nazi.

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These are quite different problems, between first love, youthful departure and the social upheavals of the “turn” time, which author Cynthia Buchheim (which is also on stage during the staging) brings together. Alexander Magerl’s music then takes care of the rest.

And even the one who struggles aesthetically with musicals or the 90s (the critic is a little like that), “Tach, Tristesse!” Perhaps a lot can be gained. In addition to his joke and joy in the conversation, the spectacle can certainly be transferred to the scene with the mood of a remarkable time, between alleged depoliticization, blind hedonism and a balla balla techno and complete social imbalance through mass unemployment, loss of meaning, fascation. In addition, there is almost something like a utopia: the plate as the last place of a solidarity among neighbors, albeit sometimes cranky.

The genre of the musical is also due to the fact that a real fall height cannot arise. The staging changes between ironic gesture, play with the trashy elements and yet very serious concerns. But the artists have the charm on their side. And show that theater can be all of this: anchored locally, politically and entertaining.

Next performances: 10th, 15th and 16.8.
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