Automatenbüfett

Lisztstr.1

1030 Wien

 

The lonely provincial citizen Adam prevents the unknown Eva from taking her own life in a pond just in time. He takes her to the vending machine buffet, a restaurant run by his wife, where food, drinks and music can be ordered at the touch of a button. The city's notables meet here under the strict supervision of Mrs. Adam. The stranger immediately sparks the men's imagination, and with Eva's support it becomes easy for Adam to implement his visionary plans to drain the surrounding ponds. Nothing should stand in the way of the longed-for economic upswing, but Eva's calculated use of emotions also exposes the double standards of the local authorities. Ms. Adam's restaurant soon becomes a battlefield of desires and resentment.

Anna Gmeyner was born in Vienna in 1902 and, like her stage heroines, remained an autonomous outsider, a figure of transit. In Berlin during the Weimar Republic, she worked as a playwright and dramaturge; her political exile took her to Paris and London, where she wrote screenplays and novels. The technical achievements and the reactionary bourgeoisie of her time inspired her to write her first play AUTOMATENBÜFETT in 1932, with which she attracted attention on the major stages in Hamburg, Berlin and Zurich.

The Swiss director Barbara Frey has already directed dramas by Anna Gmeyner's contemporaries Marieluise Fleißer and Ödön von Horvath. Now she is bringing Gmeyner's almost forgotten tragicomic folk piece to the stage.

(Source: burgtheater.at)