Frits van der Waa
De Volkskrant
Marc Krone hits the nail right on the head with this ‘Evening with Kurt Weill’; his sober staging makes this evening all the more poingant and intense.


When preparing for ‘Die Stumme Serenade’, I visited Berlin, where I was struck by the so called Solpersteine, small copper cobblestones embedded in the streets, commemorating people who once used to live there. People that were deported or slain, or had committed suicide before and during the Second World War.
Poignant in its simplicity, because more often than not no homes remain at all.
Without one of these stones such a place would have been an anonymous street corner or an office building. By these minute signals I was suddenly granted a view into history, with all its images, details and forgotten events.
So when I got a commission to create a program with music by Weill and Eisler, I immediately knew it had to be about those people behind the Stolperseine. People who were accidentally condemned to be together. Seven people who are waiting for the ‘train of death’ in a station that no longer exists: Berlin Anhalter. And what luck: Luxor Live with its magnificent ceiling look precisely like that old, no longer existing train station!
As a tribute to all the people that make up history, I named the characters of the play after seven real people that have Stolpersteine in Berlin. You can go there and visit them.
These were their addresses:

Mehringdamm 69: Anita Jonas.
Paul-Lincke-Ufer 41: Lothar Horst Koppel.
Friedrichstrasse 34: Max Matschke.
Spreng Grimselstrasse 14: Anna Demloff.
Wielandstrasse 30: Johanna Engel.
Monbijouplatz 4: Sophie Rosa Wasser.
Paradestrasse 22: Max Westphal.

 

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1. Das Eifersuchtsduett
2. Ballade von Marie Sanders en Kanonensong
3. Lied des Freundenmädchen en Mandalay song
4. Surabaya Johnny
5. Der Leutnant des lieben Gottes
6. Alabama song en Le train du ciel

Music	Kurt Weill and Hanss Eisler
Musicial director	Jasper van der Waal
Stage director, script and staging	Marc Krone
Costumes	Annerieke Peek
Light	Alex Brok
With
Anita Jonas	Pien van Gerven
Horst Lothar Koppel	Milan van Waardenburg
Max Matschke	Alexander Oliver
Anna Demloff	Merlijn Runia
Johanna Engel	Kikki Vanhoutem
Rosa Sophie Wasser	Zinzi Frohwein
Max Westphal	Alexander de Jong

2015	The Netherlands