2023-12-26 19:34:37
THIEVES’ STRIKE
A film exposé by Jura Soyfer
and a farce by Georg Mittendrein
with songs by Georg Herrnstadt156 pages, Marsyas Verlag, 2023
Jura Soyfer (1912-1939) was only 27 years old. Born in Kharkov, Russia, at the time, grew up and worked in Vienna, he died in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In the short time that he was given and in which he wrote and agitated continuously as a committed “left-wing” author, he wrote five plays that are performed again and again, countless cabaret scenes and newspaper articles.
In addition to the well-known and published works, there are also some unknown things, and Georg Mittendrein, a certified Soyfer connoisseur who directed the Jura-Soyfer Theater in Vienna for many years, retrieved a sketch from the estate.
Only a few pages long, “Strike of the Thieves” is a film exposé whose underlying love story is reminiscent of the harmless cinema comedies of the thirties – rich banker’s daughter falls in love with master thief, neither of them reveals their identity to the other at the beginning, but the happy ending is still inevitable.
In fact, Soyfer was interested in the cabaret-ironic consideration of what social status the criminal craft of theft occupies in the capitalist world. Rather, what its absence entails. What if the thieves, frustrated by an empty safe, simply go on strike?
No crime – no security industry, no banks (because you can keep the money at home), no police, and finally the newspapers die, which no longer have anything worthwhile to report… (The quote that precedes the piece “There would be a hopeless one “It would be a mess if all the crooks suddenly became honest people,” by the way, by Karl Heinrich Waggerl…)
The amused Mittendrein, who created an entire musical from the mini-template, which makes up the main part of the book. In 18 images, he has richly enriched short, brisk scenes with 13 song texts, which were set to music by Georg “Schurli” Herrnstadt, a co-founder of the “Schmetterlinge” group (the sheet music can be found in the appendix).
Never really meant seriously, but nevertheless interspersed with all sorts of truths, crooks (who are a bit reminiscent of the guys from the “Threepenny Opera”) stumble through the events with a light hand, the love story of Hans and Lillian unfolds in deliberate simplicity. Her father, bank director Kessler, has to acknowledge that the future son-in-law enjoys the best reputation in his (and his) industry…
It is a piece that is less reminiscent of a Nestroyian farce – as postulated on the book cover – than of the artistic simplicity of an original Soyver. In any case, it requires the light hand of a director – premiered in Altenburg (former GDR), where Mittendrein was once director, the director in charge turned it into a modernist outfit.
In short, the “Ball of Thieves” still awaits the correct stage interpretation in its subtle, seemingly simple cheerfulness. In any case, the play is now easily accessible to theaters between book covers.
Renate Wagner
1703624624
#Jura #Soyfer #Georg #Mittendrein #STRIKE #THIEVESOnline #Merker