Déjà Vu All Over Again

Yogi Berra, an American baseball player once said when he witnessed two other players repeatedly hit back-to-back home runs in the Yankees' seasons in the early 1960s.
When I was looking for a quote to use as a title I just felt it was perfect as that was exactly what I thought when watching the Schmidt Theater's new show the other night. 

The show had its premiere on 6th September, 2013 - again with plenty of z-celebs who most probably never ever spend a cent on that theatre and not with fans but hey now that I know what certain people running that theatre think of us fans, no surprise there, so I just went a few days later spending my 34 EUR on a top price ticket...

Die Königs Vom Kiez" (the Kings from the Kiez)

Schmidt Theater, 11th September, 2013

The show tells of the family König (translated into English King) and their rather miserable life in their basement flat in Hamburg's quarter St. Pauli:

Late 40s(?) single alcoholic dad who everyone calls captain and who has been unemployed most probably most of his life (Götz Fuhrmann)
Oldest daughter Marie who is the one with the brain being enrolled at uni (Nadine Schreier)
Twins Benny and Björn (yeah, laughed about that character naming 20 years ago) - one gay, the other a petty cook whose favourite hobby is planting illegal stuff (Stefan Stara in a double role)
15 year old precocious Pamela (Lisa Huk) who already has a baby boy
84 year old granny whose favourite hobby is taking part in drawings and other gambling games and usually  stuck in her bed room (just seen beginning of act 2 and is a puppet)
Neighbour Bertha (Caroline Spieß) - early/mid 50s (?), sexually frustrated and who seems to spend more time at the family König's home than her own and stalking the captain who cannot stand her
Alleged social worker Alex who helps the family with their grandmother and who has a crush on Marie (Stefan Rüh)
plus several other people "important" for the flow of the story as drug dealer/pimp/criminal Henning, a gay priest who has an affair with Benny, food delivery man Horst or Indian butcher Ranjid (Tim Koller).

The show is the latest written by Heiko Wohlgemuth (book & text) and Martin Lingnau (book & music) with some help from Mirko Bott on the book and directed by Corny Littmann - that already says a lot what I could expect and having spoken to someone who went to the opening night the day after I was warned but what I got to see was even more predictable and ridiculous than had expected.

Already the first number telling of how repetitive the family life is, that every morning is the same being some kind of a déjà vu (yeah not just to them) was making me yawn, and that was not because I had a tiring day at work, with the music sounding like heard not dozens, but hundreds of times before with dialogues heard thousand times before - either from the guys themselves in some of their other shows, other "playwrights" or nicked from comedians - zzzzzzzzzzz.

The family receives a letter from the administrative office that if they do not pay their outstanding rent of 7,500 EUR by next week they will be kicked out of their flat.
So the first act largely turns around the family trying to collect that money - well everyone but the father who prefers to spend it on alcohol - Benny going to some casting for the part of the HSV mascot (and that with the family, especially the dad, being FC St. Pauli fans!), Björn trying to sell his illegal plants to some drug dealer, his blood to some blood banks and his sperm to some sperm banks, Pamela blackmailing various guys she once had sex with hinting they are all the dad of her baby including some character called Ranjid, an Indian, so every single cliché about Indians is played with.
In between there is the romantic story between Marie and Alex - Alex desperate for Marie's affection but she, despite liking him too, pushing him away spending way too much thought on her family.
At end of act 1 the family learns that their grandmother won one of the grand prizes in  the weekly draw of a lottery - a payment of coincidently 7,500 EUR every month until her death - when they look after granny they have to face that she just had died.

So act 2 pretty much turns around the family trying to come up with a plan to deceive a solicitor who comes to their flat to sort out the paper work after them attempting to get rid of granny's apparent dead body  and  actually managing to lose it.
Of course most things go wrong at first, for the captain even totally downhill with him ending up in bed with Bertha (and the worst nightmare ever having to audition in front of Dieter Bohlen and other "famous" people (voices imitated by third class voice impersonator Jörg Knör, sorry but many of his voices just sound hardly the ones he tries to impersonate)) but at end all is good (even granny is not really dead as we all learn at very end).

Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Sounds innovative, doesn't it? Oh yeah, sooooo exciting, so creative, so fresh and when it is brought on stage so ludicrously I just could not wait for this to be over.
I love comedies, as people who have followed this blog and/or who know me know I love "Villa Sonnenschein" written by the same two guys several years ago, I even like and enjoy easy fluffy stuff as "Young Frankenstein" but this piece is just an utter collection of the cheapest jokes, punchlines, stereotypes, banalities etc. (often below the belt, so sexual innuendos every other minute, in some scene every minute, it seemed eventually they have no other subject, must come with the low stimulation of the brain getting closer to the IQ of certain animals)  and to laugh about them you must have lived either locked in a cellar for the last 30 years so you do not know them or you are just simply rather simple-minded and shallow-brained. But then with pretty much all Schmidt Theater shows having that concept appealing to the same kind of audience, they obviously the risk of a commercial flop even if the show is anything but of intelligence.

That the music also does not deliver anything new is most probably of no news. No song really stands out, for a minute or two maybe catchy but once the show moved on to the next scene they are already forgotten.
That the music is not live I can accept, it is no different at "Villa Sonnenschein" or plenty family musical but here it actually is a loss as some numbers actually would need a live feeling.

Yes, it is clearly showing cleverness that they found a way to bring the same concept on stage without the ordinary Schmidt Theater audience "punishing" the theatre and not going but for me the trend of not seeing shows at this theatre will continue.

As bad as the show is, at least the cast is decent.

I was not keen on Lisa Huk as Pamela though, too often I felt that she focused way too hard on getting the accent right (why did they have to play with this apparent Hamburg slang, no one younger speaks like that any more - and saying that the ones playing the kids especially Lisa did not manage to stick to it and slipped into standard German way too often), so she always felt limited in her play and her singing (and that her one solo when she meets up with the alleged dads reminded me too much of a dull song out of Rent, not her fault, that it made me cringe) and too exerted - not natural at all which I especially expected from a girl who is a snotty brat?

Stefan Stara can entertain as the gay twin, yes, he can harness every single gag about gays but it is done rather sweetly without getting too much down the total camp route, his twin brother though annoys me with that bad accent and actually being always a bit too OTT to make him likeable.

Stefan Rüh has a beautiful voice but he lacks confidence in his play for me.
Yes, Alex' has his insecure moments as when with Marie but even these require confident play and I missed that, Nadine Schreier as his love interest on the other hand had that and was a delight to watch.
Normally I just want to slap such character being miserable all the time when they have the chance to change something even when fearing family reactions but she plays and sings that with so much admiration and devotion that I cannot help but like her character.

Tim Koller in his many smaller roles shows off a great manifold comic talent adding little touches to the so different characters and even if they are so predictable portrays all these clichés so spot on.

The two people I mainly wanted to see where Carolin Spieß and Götz Fuhrmann normally adoring them both.
Saying that Carolin and her character annoyed me after a while, there is just so much shrillness I can take in.
Yes the characters are to be exaggerated but when there is a certain shrill pitch for over two hours I just wanna run away - and I am wondering why her character, when she eventually gets to her goal she is not getting a little bit less strident and a bit softer.

Götz Fuhrmann on the other hand was most probably the highlight of the evening. Playing (usually) drunk throughout the show is already a tough job especially when it is done as convincingly as he did it pulling the funniest faces but when, whatever loser and tosser his character is, played with so much fervour that I believe him to be a likeable character and that he just had bad luck in the past and resigned from an ordinary life.

Set was satisfying, I am still wondering though how someone as Marie could afford a rather fancy notebook but hey not my job to explain that and the rest worked.
What slightly annoyed me though where the scene changes from flat to a pub where you would normally find the dad (and Pamela occasionally) and back to the flat with the pub being kinda hidden behind one part of the kitchenette on the right hand side of the stage.
There are IMO always better ways doing them than lights fading out and fading in again when set is changed. Costumes worked and suited the family's living standard.

The choreography, once again by Benjamin Zobrys, is once again dull as hell, it does not help that there is a little tap dance number (and I just LOVE tap dancing). 

Even the dream scene of the captain when there is some kind of boy band routine is just making me yawn.
Seriously, give the task to someone who actually knows how to choreograph.

Stefanie Schwendy's choreography in the last Schmidt Theater's production "Schmidtparade" was so fresh, so lively, so entertaining, this here is so repetitive, too many big hands seen way too often, but hey it follows the motto of another déjà vu, and another, and another, oh, and, yeah you get it I suppose.

So overall this was a disappointing evening once again at the Schmidt Theater.
If it hadn't been for the wonderful Nadine Schreier and the tremendous Götz Fuhrmann this theatre evening would be called a flop.
There will be definitely no déjà vu moments for me at that theatre for me until January when "Villa Sonnenschein" returns.

Rating 3/10.


All show pictures taken by Oliver Fantisch and taken from http://www.tivoli.de