Elsewhere
Elsewhere
✭✭✭✭✩
by Ralph Benatzky, directed by Herbert Herrmann
Komödie am Kurfürstendamm
May 20-August 12, 2007
“Meine Schwester und ich” (“My Sister and I”) is the second most famous work by Ralph Benatzky after “Im Weissen Rössl” (“At the White Horse Inn”), both of which premiered in Berlin in 1930. “Meine Schwester und ich” shows that by 1930 operetta had already taken up the characteristics of what we would call “musical comedy”. Rather than the foolish excesses of a director like Peter Konwitschny, actor/director Herbert Hermann gave the show a cabaret production perfectly suited to the small, 500-seat Komödie am Kurfürstendamm* and the non-operatic voices of the actors. The six-person show has no chorus and the singers were accompanied by an on-stage pianist wittily integrated into the action.
The show, based on a French farce, is quite simple and can be enjoyed without knowledge of German. Professor Roger Fleuriot (Hermann) has been hired by Princess Lily Saint-Labiche (Nora von Collande) to put her library in order, but he finds her amorous approaches offend his sense of class distinctions and resigns to take a post in Nancy. Lily tells him to visit her poor, disinherited sister there who works in a shoe store. Before Roger arrives in Nancy, Lily goes there to impersonate the fictitious sister, with whom Roger promptly falls madly in love.
The two biggest hits from the show are “Ich lade Sie ein, Fräulein” and “Mein Mädel ist eine Verkäuferin”, the latter so well known to people of a certain age that Hermann invited the audience to sing along, which they heartily did. The very simple set with library shelves revolving into shoe store shelves suited the unpretentious air of the show. Hermann and von Collande (husband and wife in real life) sang in a pleasant cabaret-like diseur/diseuse style. The best voices were those of Johanna Milder as Lily’s maid, Marie and Marcus Ganser, a marvelous physical comedian, as the Austrian Graf Lacy Irimbert Ferdinand II, in love with Lily. The evening was a delight from beginning to end and finished with a medley of all the show’s hit tunes. It’s too bad there is no full recording of the work. The show plays until August 12. After that it goes on an extensive tour throughout Germany from January to April in 2008. All the locations can be found at http://gastspiel.komoedie-berlin.de/index.php?isSWF=1&nlact=&isJS=1. For more information about the Berlin run see www.theater-am-kurfuerstendamm.de.
*Komödie am Kurfürstendamm closed at its old location on May 21, 2018, and reopened on September 23, 2018 at the Schiller Theater (www.komoedie-berlin.de).
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in TheatreWorld (UK) 2007-07-28.
Photo: Herbert Herrmann and Nora von Collande. ©2007 Thomas Grünholz.
2007-07-28
Berlin, GER: Meine Schwester und ich