Casimir goes with Caroline to the great beer fest in Munich. However, he does not enjoy the fair: he has just lost his job as a chauffeur and is afraid that his fiancée, if she finds out about it, will leave him for a better match. But Caroline is not worried about it and believes that their love is stronger than money, she really does... And so begins Kasimir and Karoline, one of Ödön von Horváth's masterpieces, performed in French by the NTGent troupe. The atmosphere is uproarious, heads turn like the carrousels, conventions are shaken up, reality drifts away in the vapours of alcohol. But social hierarchies and the reign of money cannot be denied very long and will be imposed in the end, to put everything back “in order”. Because if the festival is a farcical and joyous celebration of the people's equality, pride and identity, it is also that, alienating, commercial and pitiless, of the general marketing of the world. Johan Simons and Paul Koek know how to party and their “musical theatre” shows it in the most brilliant way. The Cour d'honneur will welcome songs, laughter, dances, quarrels and anger, as well as a music that is genuinely present, composed of a dozen suites, punctuated with wild or melancholic tempos with rock'n roll as well as contemporary accents. It is in this setting that the pair will develop their theatre of intervention, history and politics, in which the social pamphlet coincides with the cruellest observation: where the economic structure is the most oppressive, class struggles lay hold even of love, and the law of the strongest always ends up governing human relations. Imagined by Bert Neumann, the impressive sets, built with tubular structures rising high along the walls of the Popes' Palace, will be like the fairground monster who devours men's dreams while welcoming their dances and games. It will be a setting for love, joy, sensuality and, at the same time, the factory where they are made on the assembly line, the garage where they end up locked in. Because through their vision of Kasimir and Karoline, it is the implacable topicality of a social-amorous drama on a backdrop of an economic crisis that Johan Simons and Paul Koek restore. ADB
Ödön von Horváth had a brilliant but fleeting destiny. A German-Hungarian author born in 1901, he died in Paris 37 years later, crushed by the branch of a tree on the Champs-Élysées as he was getting ready to leave for the United States. A “chronicler” of his time, using his own words, he lived under the Weimar Republic, experienced the rise of Nazism and went into exile, while viewing his period with a stinging and ironic look. From which came a captivating body of work, including tales and novels as well as dramatic opuses (Tales from the Vienna Wood, Faith, Love, Hope, The Last Judgement and of course Kasimir and Karoline). He was adept in particular at reviving the tradition of the popular German theatre, developing a critical vein that has lost nothing of its topicality. ADB
Distribution
The show will be broadcast live on ARTE on 29 July
direction: Johan Simons
music direction: Paul Koek
Dramaturgy: Paul Slangen
Scenography: Bert Neumann
Music: De Veenfabriek / Paul Koek
with: Reinout Bussemaker, Els Dottermans, Frank Focketyn, Elsa May Averill, Wim Opbrouck, Judith Pol, Yonina Spijker, Ineke Trekker, Louis Van Beeck, Kristof Van Boven, Oscar Van Rompay
and the musicians Ton Van der Meer, Bo Koek, Rik Elstgeest, John Van Oostrum
Production
Production: NTGent (Gand) et De Veenfabriek (Leiden)
Coproduction: deSingel (Anvers), Théâtre municipal d'Utrecht, Festival d'Avignon, Festival d'Athènes et Épidaure, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, Palais des Beaux-Arts (Charleroi), Schauspiel Köln (Cologne), Théâtre de Nanterre-Amandiers Centre dramatique national
avec le soutien: des Autorités flamandes, de l'Ambassade du Royaume des Pays-Bas à Paris
dans le cadre de: En scène les Pays-Bas ! avec le soutien de l'Institut néerlandais du Théâtre (TIN) et du Fonds néerlandais pour les Arts scéniques (NFPK)