This play inaugurated the Volksbühne's new venue in front of an enthusiastic audience. The enthusiasm is also due to the fact that the new setting by members of the Ensemble Modern transports the 175-year-old text into the 21st century with a lot of fun and temperament. The story should be familiar to most Frankfurt residents:
When looking for a picture book for his son in December 1844, Heinrich Hoffmann, a doctor and psychiatrist, found nothing suitable in Frankfurt's bookstores, only "silly picture collections, moral tales." So what to do? Hoffmann simply wrote and drew a collection of ten short stories himself, which he then placed under his son's Christmas tree. The beginning of an unexpected success story.
The new venue in the Grosser Hirschgraben makes it possible to put into practice the long-standing plan to collaborate with Ensemble Modern - and to jointly explore the work of Heinrich Hoffmann, a doctor, author and committed Frankfurt citizen. Uwe Dierksen, Christian Hommel and Hermann Kretzschmar, all three musicians in the Ensemble Modern, will compose music for the ensemble and the actors Sabine Fischmann and Michael Quast.
