Kammerspiele: Brecht formerly, everything is falling apart

Another successful and clever comedy at the Kammerspiele of the Theater der Josefstadt: Philipp Tiedemann presents Brecht’s “Petite Bourgeois Wedding” as an iconic ruin.

Malicious joy is the best joy. Above all in its purest form: without malice, but as joy in harm itself, in the fact that everything that exists perishes. “What is funny?” asks one of the guests at Brecht’s “Petite Bourgeois Wedding”. “Everything!” His wife replies: “Everything!” Entertainment!

Of awful laughter, of laughter at the fact that the façade is collapsing, that the planks that mean the world is breaking: that’s what this play by 21-year-old Bert Brecht is about, in which he depicts the bourgeois world of his family of origin, which he wanted to leave, It degraded firstly into petty bourgeois and secondly into ignition. Quite literally: at this wedding feast, little by little, all the pieces of furniture that the proud bridegroom had made of himself are broken. Such are the mechanics of this comedy that are as simple as they are ingenious. First of all, thanks to the stage designer Alexander Martineau, the performances at Josefstadt Kammerspiele were very convincing: he made all the furniture from such thin wood that it breaks on purpose, but not too quickly. It must be like this. When the world suddenly collapses, it is called a catastrophe. If you do it gradually, comedy.