Presse – Good Night

schließen

"Just lie down and put our feet up, have a sip of tea now and then, take a shower and a ten-minute sauna, and then start all over again. And say goodbye to everything else. Judith Altmeyer had warned her audience in advance. That they were cordially invited to enjoy themselves in this strange stage scenery (Jakob Engel), which imagined a single wellness oasis. That it might not turn out to be the big show. "What if we said goodbye to the illusion that it would be a special evening? And that this would be okay? A mediocre show for a mediocre audience?"

Well, that's what it would have been. And quite simply one would have come to terms with it. Listening to the chirping and jingling that Jacob Bussmann sends into the room and waiting for the moon to rise at some point. Alone, one would not want to believe it at times. And meanwhile watching Lukas Deuschel sweating and taking a sauna. "Good Night", which could now be seen at Frankfurt's Studio Naxos under the direction of Jan Philipp Stange, is a strange piece of theater. A performance that incessantly questions itself and its own conditions - reality and fiction, stage, actors and audience - through its monologue for a performing actress. It just never gets to the point. Instead, Altmeyer rises from her couch under palm trees every ten minutes, raises and disappoints expectations, opens and closes her performance, and prefers to lie down for a few more minutes. "The theater is a little dog running across the street to do its business on a lamppost," she once said. And indeed, one might think, there is clearly some truth to that. After all, this short play about a longsome retirement flirts with the promise of any production as well as with its openly exhibited shortcomings. With seduction, relevance and urgency of contemporary theater, the expectations of the audience and repeatedly the fears of the performers themselves. (...) Then the moon rises big and round and beautiful above the stage sky. One last infusion and one last shower. And everything is okay."

(FAZ, 9.11.2019)

Good Night, studioNAXOS, Frankfurt, 2019

schließen

The darker the night, the brighter the stars.
(unknown)

And isn't it the most wonderful moment when a theater play is over and you can go home? In an unclear way, into the darkest night, when the stars shine brightly and the aching head, this shocking failure of divine rank, slowly subsides from the day - we say goodbye to this night. Of everything and everyone, of sense and reason, of lies and truth, day and night.

Premiere on 1.11.2019. Further performances in Frankfurt on 2.11.19, 3.11.19, 29.05.20, 30.05.20, 31.05.20, 20.11.20, 21.11.20, 22.11.20 and 29.10.21, 30.10.21, 31.20.21.

With Judith Altmeyer, Jacob Bussmann, Daniel Degeest, Lukas Deuschel. Director: Jan Philipp Stange, stage: Jakob Engel, dramaturgy: Björn Fischer, light design: Simon Möllendorf, music: Jacob Bussmann, Jakob Engel, production: Carmen Salinas, director's assistant: Nellie Mußmann, stage assistant: Kim-Lotte Stöger.