CHICKEN ON the BACK
Characters
Margret Kobald – Housewife and Poet
Sebastian Bonsch - Cellist
The corpse – A dead man
ACTION
Suburb.
March night.
Sebastian Bonsch, a cellist living as a hermit in a bourgeois environment, is practicing a Bach partita intensely when he is startled by a shadow creeping through the darkness close to his conservatory.
Immediately afterwards, his neighbor Mrs. Kobald squeezed into the conservatory, a woman with whom he had previously only had a cordial enmity, which had developed from a few heated verbal battles over the garden fence.
Bonsch, his sacred peace disturbed, tries to get rid of the bewildered woman, who has appeared before him like a ghost, as quickly as possible – when she throws a sinister confession at his feet: Mr. Bonsch – I have just killed my husband!
Carefully, step by step, Bonsch now breaks through the armor of the terrified woman and uncovers the dark secret of her marriage.
Bonsch, who suffers from the injustice of the world in general and in particular (regarding his career), suddenly realizes: Here is finally a chance to help justice prevail through his own actions and initiative.
Yes!
He must save his neighbor – a murderer in self-defense – from prison!
A night begins in which both lives are put to the test and two lonely souls find some redemption in a tragicomic love story.
"The Chicken on its Back" is one of those good comedies that doesn't sacrifice the truth or the painful aspects of life to humor.
even if the audience laughs until the very end and doesn't realize that behind the crazy play about two bankrupts in a strange situation lies a drama."
(Magdalena Čechlovská's - Aktualne.cz – Prague)
Nevertheless, the viewer senses more than just first-class entertainment in the despair of the two characters. This new play on the program is a prime example of how nonchalantly a summer comedy can be made.
(Tomáš Št'astka (MF DNES) Prague) )
A chicken and two lonely hearts delight the audience.
In just one night, the protagonists go through a true emotional rollercoaster.
The co-production with the Berlin comedy theater on Kurfürstendamm, added to the program at short notice, offers a good 90 minutes of suspense.
The audience can expect not a Christmas spectacle like at the end of 2021, but a timeless story.
It is a comedy full of astonishing twists and turns with a bitter aftertaste.
In just one night, the protagonists go through a true emotional rollercoaster that also includes elements of tragedy.
(WAZ)
That the German premiere -
The German-language production already took place in Salzburg in 2013, directed by the author.
The fact that it is only now taking place in Hamburg is not a long-lasting loss, but a belated gain for the renowned Hanseatic boulevard theatre:
In this crime comedy, a lot happens between a man and a woman over the course of one night, all garnished with pitch-black humor and situational comedy.
(Hamburger Abendblatt)
"A delightfully funny play, a theatrical evening entirely to the audience's liking."
(Salzburg News.)
Apke forces us to laugh at violence, but at the same time exposes the absurdity and helplessness of his characters and ultimately allows love to triumph, even though it may be too late.
His comedic style is reminiscent of J.B. Shaw. He is not afraid of words that simultaneously mask and unmask the characters.
(Tribuna Warsaw)
Fred Apke's play is a successful combination of situational comedy, witty dialogues and profound psychological knowledge about the alchemy of feelings between man and woman.
(Wyborcza Katowice)
Thunderous applause.
(Kehler Zeitung)
Huge applause for a pitch-black comedy.
(Cuxhaven News)
Thunderous applause for this comedy with its momentous outcome.
(Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung)