Friday, August 21, 2020

295. “DIE KÜRVE” (The Curve) and DIE KLEINBŪRGER HOCHZEIT.” From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

 Note: no photos are available for this production.

“DIE KÜRVE” (The Curve) and DIE KLEINBŪRGER HOCHZEIT” (The Wedding Feast) [One-Acts/German Language] D: Otto Tausig; S: Hahnsheinrich Palitzch; P: Goethe Institute of Munich and Gert von Gontard; T: Barbizon-Plaza Theatre (OB); 11/24/70-12/2/70 (10) “Die Kūrve” A: Tankred Dorst; “Die Kleinbūrger Hochzeit” A: Bertolt Brecht

This pair of modern one-acts, neither of which had ever been done in New York before, was played in repertory with Kleist’s Amphitryon (covered earlier in this series) by the visiting Munich troupe, Die Brūcke (The Bridge). Tankred Dorst’s short play is about two brothers who make money by selling car wrecks from a dangerous mountain curve that, to no avail, they persist in reporting to the authorities. John Simon observed that it “was done competently but without distinction.

The other piece, a vastly entertaining 1919 Brecht farce about a Bavarian bourgeois marriage party, with its swollen-bellied bride and crumbling, hand-made furniture, was better liked. Simon said, “The cast rose skillfully to the play’s admittedly modest histrionic demands and the furniture collapsed with consummate style.”