A kettle of punchlines: complex fathers in the Bayerischer Hof
Munich – The central figure does not appear. No one in this lively family constellation would have no relation to the powerfully absent Dr. Elena Orlov. For mother and daughter, she is their trusted gynecologist and for the three gentlemen, a long-gone or current Gspusi, whom she spoiled with an unforgettable filet stroganoff, and in some cases even the wife, who actually can’t cook at all.
This multi-layered network of relationships only gradually unraveled that evening, when Ute only wanted to get to know her daughter Nadine’s new boyfriend.
The title casually plays with the psychoanalytic concept of the father complex
In order to be able to organize this meeting with homemade Grissini, she unfolds all her schemer skills. Because both Nadine’s producer Erik and her husband Anton, who raised the child, are supposed to meet, although they heartily hate each other.
So, very roughly outlined, is the starting position in “Complex Fathers”, with which the comedy in the Bayerischer Hof started the autumn. For René Heinersdorff, this tabloid social satire is a tailor-made introduction. Premiere audiences loved the crises of men having to prove “they’re not old bags” and women having to prove “they’re not old bags”.
Heinersdorff is not completely unknown in Munich with pieces like “Aufguss” or “Der Kur Schattenmann”, but he has never been present here in such concentrated form. It is his first season as the new director at Promenadeplatz and he is a leading actor in a play he has written and directed, for which he also designed the functional but not inelegant sets. As casually as the whole piece unfolds, the title plays with the psychoanalytic concept of the father complex, which is at best recognizable here as background noise.
“Complex fathers”: A ramp for experienced ramp sows
Instead, Heinersdorff plays a psychotherapist: Björn, in his mid-fifties, who, after a two-year relationship with Nadine, who is 25 years his junior, meets both of their fathers. He plays the no longer completely fresh lover in a clownesque yellow-beige-brown suit with large plaids (costumes: Andrea Gravemann) as a touchingly nice oaf who, however, discovers his chance in the unresolved conflicts between the fathers to take control with a professional appearance as a relationship therapist to win over the most embarrassing situations.
The play is above all a platform for experienced ramp pigs such as Jochen Busse as stuffy bourgeois Anton with the indomitable tendency to educate his social environment, and Hugo Egon Balder as difficult slacker Erik.
A special quality is the effective realization, translated into comedy, that everyone can shine the better the more they make their colleagues look good. And so they refine the not entirely original dialogues into brilliant punch line fireworks.
As usual in this genre, the two ladies have no chance of equally brilliant. But Katarina Schmidt as Nadine plays what used to be called a “sweet girl”, a young woman hardened by life between two fathers with complexes. Maike Bollow gets a lot of laughs as an always concerned and helicopter mother Ute. With a lot of charm and even more wit, the female opponents of the well-established old men make the best of it.
Comedy in the Bayerischer Hof, almost daily until October 29, 7.30 p.m., Sundays and public holidays 6 p.m., 29 16 16 33
