Kasimir und
Karoline - B
elieving Lov
ing Hoping

There is a devil’s wheel at the Munich Oktoberfest. A rotating round platform, a fairground ride, which you cling onto more tightly the faster it turns. There are centrifugal forces at work, even in our commercialised world – if you can’t hold on any longer, you’ll fall off. Kasimir has lost his job. And because the financial crisis cannot be separated from private trauma and ‘if someone is made redundant, love subsides, and it’s automatic’, Karoline searches for a better life. She latches onto the tailor, Schürzinger, who, not completely selflessly, passes her onto his boss, Rauch. Meanwhile Kasimir pushes on with petty criminal Merkl Franz and his girlfriend, Erna, who has already been somewhat battered by life. What began as bittersweet entertainment has become a bitterly angry descent into hell. “I had imagined that I could look forward to a brighter future – and for a few moments I toyed with all sorts of ideas. But I have to fall so low to come up again.” Karoline’s ambitions to climb the social ladder only lead to bitter disappointments. “You often long for something but then you come back with broken wings and life goes on as if you were never there.”

In 1932, in the midst of a financial crisis and regular marches, radical disillusionist Horváth managed to write the play of the moment, ‘Kasimir and Karoline’. His work still feels relevant – his merciless perspective works very well in our present day.

Premiere 26th November 2015, Thalia Theater