Retaliation (play)
Retaliation is the only play by Adele Sandrock and Robert Eysler . The play in four acts was printed as a manuscript in 1900 and has not yet been performed. It is about an actress who is abandoned by her lover because he can enter into a financially interesting marriage, whereupon the abandoned woman shoots him.
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| Title: | retribution |
| Genus: | Play in four acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Adele Sandrock and Robert Eysler |
| Publishing year: | 1900 |
| Place and time of the action: | Vienna, present |
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Time and place of the action
The play is set in Vienna , which can be seen from the occasional geographical references and the dialectal coloring of some of the characters. The action period is several weeks.
content
First act (11 scenes)
The actress Lia Pleimann - called Gialotti - does not understand that one can seriously fall in love. She had an affair with a Rittmeister, but that was some time ago. She lives in a ten-room apartment with her mother (Marie Pleimann) and her partner (Toni Auer). While she is unable to take care of material things - the apartment is too big, the debtors are in charge - the mother tries to solve the problems by matching her daughter. A poor writer (Emil Mayer), father of four children, comes to hand her a play for which he sees the last hope in the protection of the actress. She makes fun of him. A young nobleman, Alfred, who works in the Imperial and Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, makes himself known. At first Lia doesn't want to let him in, but she falls in love with him when she sees him.
Second act (14 scenes)
Lia and Alfred are now a couple. The mother matches Alfred and tries to get him to marry her daughter. Alfred weighs it down, a sideline makes it clear that he doesn't intend to either and that his mother would never allow an inappropriate connection. Mayer appears again, but Lia has not read the play. When construction officer Berger comes to collect the rent, Alfred is visibly uncomfortable and Lia allows him to hide in her bedroom. Berger offers to waive the outstanding rent if Lia appears at his evening parties. The mother tries to get her to do it, but Lia doesn't want to humiliate herself like that. She cancels the theater due to illness. She learns from Alfred that he was in a relationship with Berger's daughter, but he swears that it is now over.
Third act (18 scenes)
At Bergers there is an evening party at which the engagement of Alfred and Stefanie is to be announced. Berger is portrayed as stingy, his daughter as dominant: she knows that Alfred is weak, but all the better she hopes to control him. Alfred comes with his mother, who tells him in the stairwell that the engagement is about to be celebrated. He refuses, but ultimately complies. Lia comes too, learns what's going on from the Rittmeister who is also present, throws herself on the ground in front of Alfred and tries unsuccessfully to win him back.
Fourth act (10 scenes)
Lia is devastated. She receives a letter from the theater that contains her resignation because of her many short-term cancellations due to illness. She receives a letter from Alfred who terminates her relationship in a detached tone, whereby her behavior from the previous day against her is also brought into the meeting. Lia takes a pistol out of the closet and runs to Alfred and shoots him in front of his mother after she has cursed her as a matchmaker. Lia thinks that Alfred is always hers through death, after all, she was the only one who really loved him.
Emergence
So far nothing is known about the origin. The printed manuscript is also extremely rare and can be found in private ownership, but not in a public archive. In a letter to Roda Roda , Sandrock wrote on May 15, 1904: “Your sincere judgment has now led me to finally finish with the idea of ever promoting the wretched work to the daylight and so the retribution, from her mouth, from her pen reached the fate of annihilation. "
criticism
The play has a schematic figure structure: both main characters, who make up the pair of lovers, are each in direct confrontation with their mother, who always only pursues their own interests and wants to use the child for them. The subplot with the writer remains fragmentary, its meaning for the play open. It makes sense to refer the title to the relationship with Arthur Schnitzler , which ended unpleasantly for Adele Sandrock . He portrayed the actress in the one-act Halbzwei (1894) and in the dialogue between the actress and the poet in the Reigen (1900). With regard to this play, the one-act play Das Haus Delorme is particularly interesting, in which a mother is also portrayed in exchange with her actor's daughter. Indications that it could be a ciphertext are sporadically available. Possibly in the character of Mayer, who can only bring his four-act play to success through the actress. That could be seen as a parallel to the love affair with which Schnitzler had his first great success, not least because of Sandrock, who played Christine; But even that would not be an accurate representation of the actual processes, since the play was accepted before Sandrock's engagement for the Burgtheater .
The figure of the actress "Maltner", which only appears in the speech, is likely to be a swipe at Charlotte Wolter , who was married to a Count O'Sullivan.
literature
- Adele Sandrock and Robert Eysler: Retaliation. Play in four acts. Reproduced as a manuscript. A. Dec in Berlin, 1900.
Web links
- The text at archive.org
Individual evidence
- ^ Oskar Pausch (ed.): Rebel cat animals and artillery dog. Adele Sandrock's affair with Alexander Roda 1900/1901 . With an edition of all correspondence (= literature and life, new series . Volume 58 ). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2001, p. 261 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed July 4, 2016]).