James Brown trug Lockenwickler - von Yasmina Reza

In the organizer's words:

Following the highly acclaimed social comedies "Dreimal Leben", "Der Gott des Gemetzels", "Ihre Version des Spiels" and "Bella Figura", we are showing the new play by French author Yasmina Reza: "James Brown trug Lockenwickler", which takes up the current debates about the problems of understanding between the sexes and the generations in a pointed and very funny way. "In this play, all the qualities that characterize Yasmina Reza's dramatic oeuvre and her prose works shine again," said SZ critic C. Bernd Sucher after the premiere.

This time, Reza's main theme is identity. She presents people who have unstable identities: A young man, his name is Jacob Hutner, believes he is Céline Dion, imitates her voice - writes poetry and composes songs which he/she performs to his/her parents as Dion. And he no longer wants to be called by his nickname Muck. He plays - or is? - the vulnerable and celebrated diva. His friend Philippe, whom Jacob meets at the clinic, where they are both supposed to be cured of their "delusion" of being someone else, is a white boy who believes he is black. Jacob's parents don't really know who they are either; and the unnamed psychiatrist who takes care of the two young men has no little trouble with herself either...

Reza's play is a wonderful, light, ironic commentary on the present day and the question that really isn't new: who am I? Played by a wonderful ensemble including Michael Rotschopf (the Mackie Messer of our celebrated "Threepenny Opera"), Johanna Christine Gehlen (recently celebrated in the comedy "The Perfect Secret"), Dennis Svensson (who attracted attention as the "son" in Florian Zeller's play of the same name), Nabil Pöhls and, last but not least, Mechthild Großmann (the public prosecutor in Münster's "Crime Scene", among others), who is back on stage in Hamburg for the first time in a long time.

Price information:

St. Pauli Theater ticket hotline: (040) 4711 0 666, st-pauli-theater.de and at all known advance booking offices