“A bit Rössl, a bit of Weill,” says Thomas Pigor characterizes his stage version of Erich kästner’s novel “Three men in the snow”. World premiere is on December 31. January in the gärtnerplatz theatre. A conversation with the comedians.
Munich – A young, unemployed advertising copywriter wins a prize in a holiday competition in the luxury hotel is in the mountains, traveling heavy head of the company that has organised contests the price, rich incognito is also there. Where there is a serious likelihood of confusion – the young man is courted, the real millionaire harassed. “Three men in the snow”, Erich kästner’s novel of the thirty years, has been filmed often, the Munich gärtnerplatz theatre ventures to a stage of processing of the substance. As the author of the Revue-operetta Director Josef Köpplinger known, won the author, composer and music cabaret artist Thomas Pigor (62), to a larger audience, especially by the Duo Pigor & Eichhorn. The master of the house even staged.
+ “My first reaction was: no!” author and music cabaret artist Thomas Pigor revealed in an interview with arts editor, Rudolf Ogiermann.©Photo: Astrid Schmidhuber
How did the collaboration – and why this particular piece?
Pigor: Quite simply – because Josef has Seriously asked Köpplinger, if I want to write this piece. My first reaction was: no! Why “Three men in the snow”, why this harmless story? Then I read the novel, and to me the Kurt-Hoffmann-Film of 1955 looked. I found that the storyline is actually good for the music theatre. The main story is quickly told, this one has space for Revue numbers, and for side stories that you can tell in more detail, as they are created in the novel. Then this very own, ironic, Erich-Kästner-sound – all this has led me to say Yes. And the work has carried me then.
What have you changed from the template?
Pigor: We have upgraded the women’s roles. In the novel to be very thirty years, something you don’t want to see today. Hilde, the daughter of the real millionaire Tobler, comes in the novel until the last quarter of the game, see Fritz Hagedorn, the wrong millionaire in the eyes and want to marry him on the spot. With us, Hilde is a business-savvy woman that pursues its own goals. The headmistress, Mrs Kunkel, gets a love story, and the two Kästner-Vamps that are behind the young Hagedorn here, we have summarized a rather enigmatic figure. And we have Kästner, so Hagedorn, taken away from mother. (Laughing mischievously.) The may nerve only with phone calls.
“Three men in the snow” is based on the story “Inferno in the Hotel”, which is the assumption that the winner of a hotel stay, a simple worker, to kill at the end, because he’s been so badly treated. As currently, these “dresses make people”issue – and how it is compatible with the light Muse?
Pigor: The first version out of the twenty years was very critical, no question. But Kästner himself has defused the story, as he wrote the novel in 1934, and in Switzerland, has published, as he had ban under the Nazis write. The various adaptations of the substance to reflect the spirit of the times, from the first films in the thirties about the Film by Kurt Hoffmann up to the by Alfred Vohrer from the year 1974, which says a lot about the state of German cinema in this period. What we have tried is to leave the history in the time of the making of the novel – but with our look at this time, even with the Knowledge of what happened after that. Therefore, the advent of national socialism resonates with us, even if only in the Background.
Kästner had a distinctive style – how it fits because as a piece of the author?
Pigor: Well, I have it myself to a certain extent, you know, in the song texts Willy-nilly. But I have tried in the dialogues as many as possible of the Original sets of Kästner. I had a list with quotes, of which I will bring in a whole lot, also from other plants.
How did you imagine the production musically?
Pigor: This is to say that we have composed the music to fourth – Benedikt Eichhorn, Christoph Israel, Konrad Koselleck, and I. Benedict and I come from the Chanson, Christoph, classical and Konrad from the Jazz, so it was possible for us to paint our adaptation in many musical colors, a bit of “Weißes Rössl”, a bit of Kurt Weill, a little bit of Zarah Leander, a bit of Duke Ellington. Everything is based on the Sound of the thirty years, wherein we realize that these styles of music at that time would never have been at the same time listening on the same stage.
are you as a comedian to be a “stage animal” – how difficult it is for them, not even in the Director to intervene?
Pigor: As the author I am God, can be any character from man to woman or let die.(Laughs.) Me is aware, however, that I must say goodbye as an author in the course of the staging process of my fantasy. The staging, as the author in your head, you will never see on the stage. The decisive factor is whether a Director takes the template seriously. And I have to praise Josef Ernst Köpplinger really. Also for his look, for the way he leads the Ensemble. He has found for many of the situations are wonderful solutions, I can not think of would have me so. Watch as something New arises, it is fascinating to me.
What Erich Kästner means to you personally?
Pigor: I guess his children’s books, because he treats children as Autonomous people. Since he was in his time a pioneer. I appreciate him as a poet, his political poems. His view on things, his formulation of art as much to today’s date.
you Can still remember your first encounter with a Text from him?
Pigor: I don’t know, to be honest, if I had read as a child “Emil and the detectives” or another of his children’s books. But I remember, that we have taken in the school in teaching the “Factual Romance.” I found the poem is super, and I have it set to music as a sixteen year old with my guitar. May be that I saw as a child, “The double Lottchen” in television, but back then it was clear to me that this is of Kästner.
The conversation Rudolf ogiermann.
