Winnetou - The Legacy
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| Title: | Winnetou - The Legacy |
| Genus: | Outdoor play |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Pierre Brice |
| Literary source: | Motifs from Winnetou by Karl May |
| Publishing year: | 1991 |
| Premiere: | June 29, 1991 |
| Place of premiere: | Kalkberg Stadium , Bad Segeberg |
| Director of the premiere | Pierre Brice / Dagmar Kurr |
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Winnetou - The Legacy is an open-air play that Pierre Brice wrote as a collage of Karl May motifs for his farewell season in Bad Segeberg .
content
The Legacy is a piece penned by Pierre Brice, in which Winnetou is already dead and only appears in recurring flashbacks and at the end of the piece as a “vision”. It begins immediately after Winnetou's death: Sam Hawkens reveals the most important events in the life of the great Indian to an internationally mixed crowd.
According to Karl May, it would have been an option in principle to use the volume Winnetous Erben as a template - Pierre Brice, however, only looked roughly and briefly in volume 33 of the collected works - or overlooked a lot. What awaited the Karl May visitors in Segeberg was largely a remake mix of scenes from the Winnetou films in which Brice had played successfully in the 1960s.
So Winnetou's “career” was examined again in detail: This time one saw in an open-air stage version , like Winnetou (then like 1991 Pierre Brice ) on Old Shatterhand (then Lex Barker , 1991: Hermann Giefer ) and his friends with Sam Hawkens (then like 1991 Ralf Wolter ) meets how Nscho-Tschi (then Marie Versini , 1991: Dora Nagy ) falls in love with Shatterhand and Winnetou with Ribanna (then Karin Dor , 1991: Stephie Kindermann).
Roughly that was Karl May, but the scenes had been taken from the feature films down to the word. As a result, the play had to forfeit a lot of Karl May's details, because the Karl May films had already treated Karl May very freely at the time.
The highlight of the play was a grandiose staged action plan by the Apaches on the railway camp, designed by Wilfried Zander . For minutes there was something to be seen everywhere on the stage; a lot of movement and breathtaking action impressed.
In the framework of the story, all of Karl-May-according to Winnetahs and Winnetous-appeared - but by and large Pierre Brice had written past May.
Others
The piece had 317,000 visitors and this attendance record was only broken after 18 years.
The 32-page program booklet had 43 color photos of the actors and scenes from the production and contained a colored folding poster by Pierre Brice.
Press coverage
“Long-winded legacy - a lot of palaver, little action and sometimes dubious humor shape 'Winnetou - the legacy', which many of the almost 7,000 premiere guests judged as kitsch, slapstick, clutter. It's a shame, because great actors are on the scene for the 40th anniversary of the Karl May Games. Pierre Brice returned to the Kalkberg primarily as a writer, director and living legend, but not as the main actor. His name is now Ralf Wolter. As Sam Hawkens, the 62-year-old holds the two and a half hour long piece together excellently, which has some highlights, but lacks a real arc of suspense. On the other hand, the wonderfully successful, dramaturgical climax before the break seems almost overloaded: there is shooting, wrestling and blowing up in several places at the same time. There is also a lot of movement when the residents of Helldorf-Settlement dance in the arena. In front of the 'mayor's office', the performers sway to Schuhplattler and the drinking song ' There's a Hofbräuhaus in Munich '. Doesn't that fit more into RTL's hayloft lederhosen program than in the far north, let alone in Karl May's Wild West romanticism? "
“Long faces at the legacy - The premiere of 'Winnetou - The Legacy' tore Pierre Brice 'fans into their usual enthusiasm, as expected; but the rest of the audience had rather embarrassed faces. Who cares that Karl May spins around in his Radebeul crypt when the Winnetou games begin in Bad Segeberg - he wouldn't be the first author whose literary models others drove around. But with Bavarian folk music, Negro children in dirndls and other flat joke numbers, the western games degenerate into pure farce. Only long-winded things were offered. (...) Sam Hawkens travels into the past. Thick artificial fog wafts through the stadium. When Ralf Wolter, who is in great harmony with the children, starts telling the story by the picturesque dead tree trunk, it's like Disneyland, like something out of a beautiful fairy tale. You want to sit down and listen to the nice and funny uncle with the wig. And then finally Winnetou appears. The previously somewhat nebulous plot clears up in the literal sense. Violent action scenes, lots of gunpowder smoke, beautiful explosions - finally, right ' Wild West . "
“Götterdämmerung - There isn't much that can be criticized about the plot of the piece, because the piece has no plot. (...) Sam Hawkens' listeners are children: red, white and black from the neighboring Helldorf Settlement and the Komantschendorf, where the events often jump, but only to make them ridiculous in the highest degree. After all, who can make friends with Bavarian folk music, eternal dancing around with Schuhplattler inserts and Massa Bob's angry family and an invasion of kiddies? And what the hell does that have to do with Karl May? With the exception of a few names, the whole play has nothing in common, after all, it is the films, not the books, that Pierre Brice as an author so diligently took over. The robbery is great, a lot going on, the entire stage was involved. Then: finally a break! Quite a few people went home ... "
source
- Entry in the Karl May Wiki
literature
- Reinhard Marheinecke , Nicolas Finke, Torsten Greis, Regina Arentz: Karl May am Kalkberg. History and stories of the Karl May Games Bad Segeberg since 1952 , Bamberg / Radebeul: Karl May Verlag 1999, p. 316 ff.