The Tobacconist
based on Robert Seethalers novel / Stage version by Marcel Kohler
Alter Saal
[recommended for ages 15 and up]
Young Franz Huchel has to leave his home village by the Attersee lake to work in Vienna as an apprentice in a tobacconist's - a small tobacco and newspaper shop. It is late summer in 1937 and the new impressions overwhelm the 17-year-old: The big city that is noisy and stinks (or are these the rotten times?), the new job at the tobacconist's (a temple of relish?), the growing friendship with regular customer Sigmund Freud (the famous Sigmund Freud?!), first love (that overwhelming, immortal, overpowering, unfulfilled love - or is that libido, Mr. Freud?) and his dreams (which haunt Franz, like uninvited guests). The shocks of growing up collide with the political shocks of the world. Franz wonders: »Have I gone mad? Or has the world gone mad?«
After the great success of his production »The Tale of the Little Mermaid«, director Marcel Kohler is working for the second time at the Theater und Orchester Heidelberg. His stage version of the best-selling novel supplements the text with documentary material, an exchange of letters between Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein and song lyrics by the band Wanda.
Listen to an introduction in German by Ida Feldmann here.