Cabaret/Musical by Georg Kreisler

“Lola Blau is basically the story of powerlessness. Lola is just as helpless in the face of anti-Semitism as she is in the face of her own Jewishness. She is powerless against the stubborn Swiss, rages impotently against her sex career in America, and in the end she is powerless again against the Austrian eternals.” (Georg Kreisler)

Lola Blau, a young Jewish actress, is looking forward to her first permanent engagement in Linz. However, Hitler’s invasion puts an end to her dreams. She flees to Switzerland, where she ekes out a living as a nightclub singer, and is eventually granted an entry permit to the USA. On her way to America, she is only marginally concerned with the fate of the other Jewish emigrants. Once there, Lola Blau becomes a celebrated star, but she suppresses her loneliness with alcohol and pills. At the end of the war, she receives an unexpected phone call from her childhood sweetheart Leo, whom she has not heard from since her escape. Her political awareness is awakened. She finally returns to Austria, turns her back on the uncritical stage and goes into cabaret. But her hope of using her own means to make people think in the long term ends in resignation.

The eloquent grand seigneur of the enigmatic, often apocalyptic chanson, the cabaret artist, gifted poet, master of black humour and musician Georg Kreisler (1922-2011) wrote his Lola in 1971, but the subject matter has lost none of its topicality.

 

Due to restrictions in Arts funding, we were struggling to meet our goal and had to postpone this until early next year.