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FELIX KRULL (ÜBER VERGÄNGLICHKEIT UND ILLUSSION, DIE ZEIT, DEN VERFALL, DIE ERINNERUNG, DAS WETTER UND DIE LIEBE)

< ETA HOFFMANN THEATER >

CAST: LEON TÖLLE, MAREK EGERT, STEPHAN ULLRICH

 

DIRECTING TAMARA SONJA AIJAMATHIESEN

 

TEXT: PAULA KLÄY BASED ON THE NOVEL BY THOMAS MANN

 

STAGEDESIGN / COSTUME: ANNA SIEGROT

 

DRAMATURGY: ANTONIA LEITGEB-BUSCHE

 

 

PREMIERE: NOV 2025

(WORLD PREMIERE)

 

 

< FELIX KRULL (On transience and illusion, time, decay, memory, the weather and love >

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Felix Krull is perhaps Thomas Mann's most modern character, an impostor who stages himself through his language and appearance. In his “Confessions", he does what has long been part of our media world: self-promotion. 

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Paula Kläy has taken this idea further and reworked it in her adaptation for the ETA Hoffmann Theater: She asks how storytelling creates and changes relationships. In her version of the material, she condenses the Krull cosmos into three characters: In a ruin – perhaps the Paris hotel where Felix made his rise to success? – Felix Krull, the hotel bellboy Armand and the writer Diane Philibert appear. In their encounter, the present blurs with the past and future, and reality with fantasy. But who determines the narrative and which story dominates? This is a poetic piece about the power of the narrator and the (im)possibility of true relationships. 

Director Tamara Sonja Aijamathiesen makes clever use of the spatial possibilities offered by the studio at the ETA Hoffmann Theatre in Bamberg to illustrate Kläy's play with levels and meta-levels.

...Fantasy lurks everywhere in this world premiere, not only as a miracle of the imagination. The performance, the self-expression, develops into a dangerous black hole that levels personalities.

(Nachtkritik)

Whether Kläy is addressing the young man's self-love, who playfully insinuates himself into the favour of the rich and beautiful in the novel, or whether she is splitting the character because it makes for more dramatic scenes, remains open to interpretation. Presumably, both are true. And both come to fruition in the world premiere by Danish director Tamara Sonja Aijamathiesen (born 1992).

...It has a beautiful lightness and thrives on the charisma of these two actors, who resemble Beckett's characters, only brighter, and then try their hand at improv theatre. 

(Theater der Zeit)

The fact that this is demanding but anything but pretentious is because of Aijamathiesen's light-as-a-feather staging, which combines depth with humour, as well as the ever-present actors Leon Tölle, Marek Egert and Stephan Ullrich.

(Süddeutsche Zeitung)

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