Tonight: Lola Blau

The Deutsches Theater München presents

Between comedy and tragedy

Tonight: Lola Blau from 1971 by Georg Kreisler has lost none of its topicality to this day. It tells the story of a young Jewish actress at the time of Austria’s connection to Nazi Germany in 1938. The musical for an actress covers a range from virtuoso comedy to touching tragedy and can be experienced for the first time in the Silbersaal.

A Jewish actress on the run

The young Jewish actress Lola Blau lives in Austria in 1938. She is not interested in the political events of her time. Even when her uncle calls as he is fleeing to Poland, she has only one thing on her mind: her first theatre engagement in Linz. But due to the invasion of the National Socialists, things turn out differently: Lola Blau has to flee to Switzerland and when it is no longer safe there either, she has to emigrate to America. She returns after the war as a celebrated star, but finds that life in her old homeland is still far from tolerant coexistence.

A story of powerlessness

Georg Kreisler’s tragic musical comedy from 1971 has not lost its relevance to this day. In what at first appears to be a cheerful musical with songs like “Im Theater ist was los” and “Sex is a wonderful habit“, the poet, cabaret artist and composer bitterly criticises political and social conditions, which becomes visible in songs like “Alte Tränen” and not least “Zu leise für mich“.

Kreisler highlights the catastrophic situation of Jewish artists during the Third Reich, which he experienced first-hand when he fled in 1938. “Tonight: Lola Blau is the story of a powerlessness,” Kreisler himself wrote about his work, “Lola is as helplessly powerless against anti-Semitism as she is against her own Jewishness. She is powerless against the stubborn Swiss, rages powerlessly against the sex career in America, and in the end she is powerless again against the Austrian eternally strict.“