The Escape

A few hours earlier, he had abruptly ended his performance there. The night watchman Smutny hears Winter tell him that he believed he recognized a face from his past in the audience: that of a former Gauleiter, the "Bloodhound of Poland." Haunted by his memories, Winter immerses himself once again in the NS era through scenic flashbacks, which he survived as the son of a Jewish mother only because people like the Gauleiter appreciated him as a comedian. In the darkness of the night, Winter grapples with the question that his tormentor once planted in his soul: Has he, the politically persecuted, committed a crime? The Austrian playwright Lida Winiewicz has crafted a moving play based on the memories of the great comedian and concentration camp survivor Ernst Waldbrunn, depicting a Jewish artist's fate in the 20th century, which had its highly acclaimed premiere in 1965. Eighty years after the end of World War II and in light of the resurgent authoritarian forces in Europe and around the world, the new theater director David Bösch will rediscover this unjustly forgotten material for the stage.