Party time!

The old German proverb, “Celebrate at every possible opportunity” appears a little sarcastic in the light of yesteryear. “Let’s blow our own trumpet!” cried the legendary comedian Wolfgang Neuss and then he blew very hard indeed. His congenial observations, with Wolfgang Müller, in the internationally successful satire Aren’t we wonderful (1958) took acerbic and humoristic stock of 40 years of turbulent German historic celebration. The film centres on the lives of two men who could not be more different: the one – an enduring opportunist who always swims on the crest of the wave of success as a result of his compliancy, whether during the German Empire, the interwar period, the Nazi dictatorship or the time of the economic miracle – Bruno Tiches knows exactly how to reach the top and stay there. The other, Hans Boeckel, with chaste prudence remains conscientious and thus often winds up empty handed.
Whilst many German critics accused the screen adaptation of Hugo Harting’s novel of downplaying history, they failed to recognise that the true critique of the film was about the present-day, the seamless “onwards and upwards” nature of many war profiteers under new identities.

The theatre collective andcompany&Co. – founded in 2003 – take the motion picture by its grass roots and pull it topically up-to-date for the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen, whilst simultaneously looking back at a time when the city of Göttingen was nicknamed “Hollywood on the River Leine” (as a result of the many films which were produced there; including Aren’t we wonderful which won a Golden Globe in the US, a Silver Bear in Moscow and was the first German film to be shown in cinemas in Israel). andcompany&Co. produces a stage spectacle of fact and fiction interwoven amid artistic and philosophical ideas from the 20th and 21st century. Song, dance and iconic moments from the film culminate in an extraordinarily sardonic revue of the past 200 years of German history. Party time!