A respectable wedding
A respectable wedding
Kleinbürgerhochzeit
Revival premiere of the comedy “practically a perfect play” at a time when the phenomenon of bourgeoisie becomes a “mainstream” state of mind.
In the one-act comedy A Respectable Wedding (1919), Bertolt Brecht, one of the greatest German playwrights and theater reformers, ruthlessly mocks the apparent perfection, false morality, sentimentality, and meanness of the bourgeois class. The wedding, which represents the pinnacle of illusory happiness for the bourgeoisie, falls apart before everyone’s eyes as quickly as the groom’s handmade furniture. Brecht uses the example of a wedding to highlight many broader social problems, exposing the absurdities that emerge when the facade of a happy event of an exemplary family begins to crumble, and all the secrets of the newlyweds and guests come to light. Through the creation of a contemporary microcosm, Brecht clearly demonstrates the bourgeois mechanisms that contributed to the development and rise of Nazism.
About the 2009 production of A Respectable Wedding at Drama SNG Maribor directed by Mateja Koležnik, now one of the most recognized Slovenian directors at home and abroad, Vesna Jurca Tadel wrote in Sodobnost that it is “a real treat – both in terms of acting creations and precise and thoughtful direction and stage solutions that create the foundation for many comic situations and details.”
Fran Žižek Hall
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