Mittelreich (Middle Rich)

Being medium-wealthy is fraught with more problems than one would generally imagine. As a prisoner of his inn and its long tradition, the landlord “Seewirt” seems to have no other option but to repeat the mistakes of his elders. Escape is apparently not an option; there is far too much traction. This is one plotline from Sepp Bierbichler’s book which Anna-Sophie Mahler lays open. The other thread deals with the deluge of refugees, the displaced people who were forcibly billeted with civilians after the Second World War – unthinkable nowadays – which caused great resentment against them. The more unobtrusively Jochen Noch as Viktor clears his throat and says no more than absolutely necessary, the more this gets under our skins and shows us that this fight for prosperous territory is an archaic one, a matter of instinct. In this adaptation, there is a wealth of finely drawn characters, of excellent chorus arrangements. But if there were a danger of these arrangements drifting towards the epicurean, it is warded off by the harshness of the second part. There is an extreme transformation in Annette Paulsmann, who changes from a resolute landlady to a demented old hag in the turn of a chair. Beautifully measured are Steven Scharf’s confessions about the insanity reigning in a boys’ boarding school, where he is thrown among the clerics and, tormented by homesickness and a longing for tenderness, lets them get away with far too much.

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