“Happy End (No Guarantee)” at the Staatstheater Darmstadt

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• The man who polarizes

If only saving the world were that easy! You hijack a packed theater, then call the federal government and ultimately demand that all evils be eliminated. Nothing happens to anyone, the hostage-takers escape unnoticed through a tunnel, and nothing stands in the way of the happy ending: everything will be fine. Of course, one can think of the daily actions of the climate activists with Felix Krakau’s self-directed short drama “Happy End (no guarantee)”, which premiered in Darmstadt in Darmstadt, and who, with a similarly fanatical idealism as the three hostage-takers (Jasmin-Nevin Varul, Daniel Scholz, Mathias Znidarec) want to save the world from climate collapse in the State Theater’s chamber plays. But Kraków goes one step further. Its activists do not name any clear goals, they are vaguely concerned with improving all conditions, eliminating injustice, environmental destruction, war and suffering. In other words, what almost everyone wants.

You can’t seriously make fun of that, and so the whole evening walks a fine line. On the one hand, the three dilettantes, who in their zeal reveal their real names and places of origin and unfortunately do not reach anyone at the federal government, say nothing but things that everyone immediately would sign. On the other hand, the comedy of the plot arises from the insurmountable gap between desire and reality. This repeatedly leads to scenes in which the slapstick covers up the seriousness of the fundamental question. And that’s just as well. Because what rolls there in seventy entertaining minutes across Marie Gimpel’s stage, which at the end creates a vaudeville mood with colorful flickering neon lights, does not want to be a profound discourse about our childhood fantasies of saving the world, but rather jokes with the horror quite harmlessly and without any malicious unmasking intentions. The fact that one repeatedly turns to the audience and comments out of character underlines the reflective character of the piece.

The happy ending for the earth and people is not guaranteed, but Kraków takes our longing seriously. The three tender hostage-takers are representatives of our less than complex desires, which have to be shattered by the complicated reality. You can laugh happily about that in “Happy End (no guarantee)” – you laugh at yourself.

Happy End (no guarantee) March 11, 7:30 p.m., Kammerspiele of the Staatstheater Darmstadt