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Loriot’s world on the stage of the Boulevardtheater Bremen in the Tabakquartier (Woltmershausen): Scene from the “Great Loriot Evening”, which combines a total of 19 sketches by the master. © Boulevardtheater Bremen
“The Great Loriot Evening” celebrates its premiere at the Boulevardtheater Bremen. After “Frühstücksei” and “Kosakenzipfel” there are standing ovations.
Bremen – A piece of Bremen’s media history is taking over the boulevard theater in Bremen’s tobacco quarter: “The Great Loriot Evening” gives sketches from the 1970s, produced at the time by Radio Bremen, a new look. The directors Kay Kruppa and Marc Gelhart use television recordings and cartoon templates.
The orientation towards Bernhard-Viktor (Vicco) von Bülow alias Loriot (1923 to 2011) creates a world of its own. For example, various pictures by the great master can be seen. Among them is a sequence of three: A woman has a balloon for a little boy. The boy destroys it with his cigarette (which the woman does not see at first) and walks away. The unmistakable bulbous noses are a typical feature of the pictures.
Of course, Loriot is also portrayed on the sofa – by Hermes Schmid. He manages to capture some of the warm, comfortable calm with which Loriot presented his view of life and people – including modern people who want to see their life’s problems addressed. And that has to happen quickly, within five minutes. At the end there are further deep insights. Among them: “A life without a pug is possible, but pointless.”
Encounter in the bathtub
And of course, at some point a bathtub appears on the stage. In front of it: a rubber duck. In it: Dr. Klöbner (Hermes Schmid) and Mr. Müller-Lüdenscheidt (Joachim Börker). Embarrassed glances to the side. Klöbner has probably ended up in the wrong hotel room. The contentious conversation – initially in an empty bathtub – gets off to a brisk start. When the men jump up and admonishingly shout out the other’s name with indignation, they do so with considerable tension and their bodies stretched out in accordance with the conflict.
The sketch “Love in the Office” is performed with remarkable liveliness. Entrepreneur Karl-Heinz Meltzer (Christian Schliehe) wants to seduce his employee Fraulein Dinkel (Kathrin Busch). Both seem authentically conservative. Even their poor eyesight and the fact that they take off their glasses is convincing. The boss starts to slip and soon ends up hanging on his seated employee. An incoming business call, however, is still handled with sufficient professionalism. The romance continues. If only a lost business letter were not found, a boss would not be able to help himself.
Escalation and amusement
Kathrin Busch, making her first appearance at the Boulevard Theater, also makes the well-known TV announcement for the eighth part of an English TV crime drama called “The Two Cousins” – a tough battle to pronounce an excessive number of English names, which eventually makes it impossible to pronounce the German correctly. Busch shows a strong change of mood, at first perhaps even seems slightly cheerful, only to arrive at a certain seriousness in her description, which eventually gives way to despair. A lively scene, watching Busch is fun.
Hermann (Joachim Börker) and his wife Berta (Miriam Distelkamp) can also be seen. Berta may seem a little younger than in the cartoon. In “Frühstücksei” the way the two talk past each other is still wonderful. And so one classic sketch follows the next. There is an enormous escalation in “Kosakenzipfel”, which is received with great amusement by the audience.
The actors’ clothing is closely based on the originals. Together with the dialogues and attitudes, not only Loriot’s world but also another time is brought to the stage – a vivid overall impression into which typically human elements still fit, such as the timeless lack of mutual understanding between men and women or the escalation over something banal. The audience reacts with constant smiles, loud laughter, lots of applause and standing ovations.
