oeticket
Neustiftgasse 1, 1070 Wien
In the early 1920s, Joseph Roth, who was born in 1894 in Brody near Lviv in present-day Ukraine, revisits his old homeland of Galicia after many years. He reports on this journey in the Berliner Zeitung: “Sometimes a nation becomes modern. Now it is the Ukrainians.” Just over a hundred years later, the Volkstheater follows in Joseph Roth's footsteps to Lviv and presents there, as in Vienna, an international co-production – a revue against war, against gloom and despair. “It is interesting to note the phenomenon that a nation, as soon as it loses its independence, begins to dominate the operettas and variety shows,” Roth continues, coining the term “Ukrainomania” in this text. His words convey more than just the sarcastic wit of an excellent feuilletonist, who would soon become a celebrated portraitist of a world and existence caught between war and false peace with bestsellers like “The Spider's Web,” “Hotel Savoy,” “Radetzky March,” and “Job.” But who was Roth, born in 1894, really? Even on May 30, 1939, when he was buried in Paris exile, there was disagreement at his grave about whether to honor a Jew or a Christian, a monarchist or a socialist, a misanthrope, a great realist, or merely an alcoholic. UKRAINOMANIA – this will be the revue of his life, a pandemonium populated with survivors, “hotel patriots,” and other figures from Joseph Roth's work. A dialogue balancing between gallows humor and sorrow, between ensembles from Lviv and Vienna. The production UKRAINOMANIA by Jan-Christoph Gockel is a collaboration between the Volkstheater Vienna and the National Theater Maria Zankovetska, Lviv, in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and peaches&rooster.