"Lola Blau in the castle cellar" Bad Vilbel Things to Do Tip by Nemorino

In addition to the big productions in the main part of the castle, they have also started doing smaller late-night shows in the castle cellar, in a room which seats exactly one hundred people.

This summer they are doing a "grusical" down there, entitled "Shakespeare, Murderers, Pulp and Fiction", as well as a series of "erotic readings".

In 2003 down there in the cellar I saw a brilliant production, starring Sabine Fischmann, of the musical Heute Abend Lola Blau (This Evening Lola Blau), by the Austrian composer, author and cabaret artist Georg Kreisler (1922-2011).

Lola Blau in this musical is a young Jewish actress and singer who is caught totally unawares when the Nazis take over Austria in 1938. She has to flee the country, loses track of her boyfriend in the general confusion, gets a cold welcome in Switzerland, earns her passage to America by singing on shipboard for the first class passengers and the Jewish people in steerage, and has a huge career as a singer in America (here Georg Kreisler has written a very funny and satirical song in English called "Sex is a Wonderful Habit" -- otherwise the show is all in German). After the war she returns to Vienna and gets reunited with her boyfriend, who has survived a concentration camp. But she can't get roles in the theaters, despite hilarious efforts to do so, and ends up singing bitter but very funny songs in a small cabaret.

This is essentially a one-woman show (Kreisler wrote it twenty-some years ago for his then-wife), and is a brilliant tour-de-force for any singer-actress who can pull it off. Besides Sabine Fischmann, I have also seen Ingrid El Sigai perform it with the Kammeroper Frankfurt.

Website: http://www.georgkreisler.de/