Karoline: “All I ever really wanted was to have a drink. But than the Zeppelin came along and I went into the rollercoaster. And then you said that I would leave you anyway because you are now unemployed. Anyway, you said.”
Kasimir: “Most certainly, mylady.”
A new adaptation of Kasimir und Karoline van Ödön von Horváth. Ulrike Quade’s first direction with renowned Swiss theatre Theater Basel.
The original setting of Kasimir und Karoline (1932), an Octoberfest during the Depression, is translated into a dance festival scene, with all its obscure visitors. We watch Kasimir’s world collapse when he loses his job and the love of his life redirects her affections towards a man with more market value. A new order ensues. Kasimir is the only character opposing the system, but there is a price to be paid.
Ödön von Horváth (1901-1938) called his play a ballad of the unemployed driver Kasimir and his bride, a ballad full of pity and remorse but lightened by humor, that is to say by the everyday notion that we all have to die.’ Is man – as Horvath states – degraded by crises and the political situation?
