Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
A drunk, a neo-Nazi, a pregnant woman and a Turk's endless wait in Germany's jobline has become the unlikely subject of a musical comedy staged in Dresden's state theatre.
"Hartz IV - Das Musical" tries to voice the plight of Germany's 4.6 million unemployed -- to the borrowed tunes of old hits like "West Side Story", "Cats", "Hair" and even "My Fair Lady".
In fact the fate of the characters is closer to that of those in a play by Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett.
The scene is the bleak office of a state unemployment agency, the reception desk is barred shut and nobody speaks.
They simply wait as an electronic board flashes the number of the next person due at the unmanned desk.
Finally, as if to kill the time, the characters start to sing.
The drunken bum, called Tevje of course, picks his tune from "Fiddler on the Roof" and reworks the lyrics.
"If I were a rich man, then I would not have to work... If I were a rich man, then I would build houses for everyone, right here in the centre of town," he laments.
It is all a bitter critique of the labour reforms introduced by the government of former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, entitled Hartz IV after retired Volkswagen boss Peter Hartz who headed the commission that drafted the reforms.
The measures, designed to inject new life into the labour market, cut long-term unemployment benefits to the level of social welfare payments and have meant a considerable cut in income for more than two million people.
In the summer of 2004, thousands took to the streets in regular protests against the reforms and, for many critics, they stand as a symbol of what is wrong with German society and politics today.
Director Erik Gideon manages to get a tragi-comic laugh out of it all in the musical that opened 10 days ago in Dresden, in the former communist East Germany that is hardest hit by the country's economic slump.
On opening night, the elite of Dresden society gathered just a block away for the city's first debutantes' ball for more than 60 years.
Gideon, 42, said he wanted to break with the conventions of German theatre and introduce reality into the genre of the musical.
"I wanted to break a taboo, by making people laugh about unemployment. Until now musical comedies in German were all lush, complete with cats and lions on stage and actors on rollerskates."
In one corner of the stage, next to a dying potplant, a woman who takes coins for visits to the unseen but surely unpleasant loo, knits non-stop.
The young veiled Turkish woman sees a job opportunity in setting up shop next to her, offering the same service at a discount... until the neo-Nazi sweeps her up in a passionate embrace for an impromptu remake of "West Side Story".
The audience lapped it up. As the curtain fell, they called back the cast for a fourth, then a fifth round of raucous applause. And still not a single one of the actors smiled.
yap-ef/gj/bm
AFPEntertainment-Germany-culture-theatre-unemployment
AFP 251218 GMT 01 06
COPYRIGHT 2004 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
