Toward the Beautiful View

(ZUR SCHOENEN AUSSICHT)

By CATHY MEILS

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A Volkstheater presentation of a play in two acts by Odon von Horvath. Directed by Michael Gruner.
 
Max ... Fritz Hammel
Karl ... Uwe Falkenbach
Mueller ... Roger Murbach
Strasser ... Erwin Ebenbauer
Emanuel,
#Baron von Stetten ... Rainer Frieb
Ada,
#Baroness von Stetten ... Vera Borek
Christine ... Gabriele Schuchter
 

The 1920s were about to roar their last when Odon von Horvath wrote "Zur schoenen Aussicht." The title, a play on words, translates as "Toward the Beautiful View" or "To the Beautiful Prospect." It's both the name of a hotel and a reference to the young heiress who could be the salvation of the hotel's down-on-their-luck inhabitants. But the shabby hotel's "beautiful view" is as much a delusion as the prospects for a brighter future are for this fistful of opportunists. Horvath's after-the-party's-over play is a good fit in the post-' 80s world, and the tight, honest, atmospheric production at the Volkstheater is pungently satisfying.

Strasser (Erwin Ebenbauer), the bankrupt hotel owner, presides over a collection of seedy vipers in the quietly dangerous manner of a Mafia king. The hotel's denizens include Max (Fritz Hammel), the caustic young desk clerk/waiter; Karl (Uwe Falkenbach), the massive chauffeur who looks capable of intimidating even the toughest customers on the skinhead club circuit; and Emanuel (Rainer Frieb), a baron who has gambled away his fortune.

Paying the champagne bill for her twin brother and trio of gigolos is Ada (Vera Borek), a promiscuous and vulgar baroness. (One stingingly funny moment has her asking if there's any cure for syphilis, and a sudden silence hits the table of men.)

Mueller (Roger Murbach), the champagne salesman, visits the hotel in an improbable attempt to collect money for the cases of champagne delivered a year earlier. He seems at first to be no match for Strasser and his clique, but by play's end, there's an eerie feeling that Mueller represents the face of fascism about to overtake the German world.

Enter Christine (Gabriele Schuchter), the young woman Strasser bedded the previous summer. Now pregnant, she's come to find him, dreaming of their becoming a family. Strasser, thinking her destitute, looses his buddies on her, humiliating and threatening the vulnerable girl, who turns the tables on them when she announces her newly acquired inheritance.

Director Michael Gruner, in his first assignment for the Volkstheater, brings a wonderful film noir quality to this dark comedy. Under his guidance, the ensemble turns in consistently fine performances, understated yet completely engrossing.

Ebenbauer epitomizes the attractively dissolute blackguard. Hammel's fine-tuned performance could serve as a master class for young leading men. Frieb is impeccable as the aristocratic sponger.

Borek brings drunken lustiness to her life-of-the-party character. Murbach's frustrated, tenacious salesman and Falkenbach's bullying chauffeur add a thoroughly believable bourgeois note. As Christine, Schuchter gives a performance notable for its clarity and truthfulness.

Horvath wrote "Toward the Beautiful View" when he was in his mid-20s; it wasn't performed until 1969, more than 30 years after his early death. Small comfort to budding playwrights, but this is an accessible, morbidly funny play, ripe for exploration by ambitious directors and companies beyond the German-speaking world.

Sets, Peter Schulz; costumes, Gabriele Sterz. Artistic director, Emmy Werner. Opened Nov. 13, 1994, at the Volkstheater. Reviewed Nov. 16; 971 seats; 390 schillings ($ 37) top. Running time:2 HOURS, 30 MIN.