105. “The Good Friends” (Mon Enfant)

Comedy in three acts by A. Janvier de la Motte
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

For comedies of this kind, an audience is needed. It should not be said that this audience must renounce any kind of art, indeed anything that even remotely resembles art. For to speak of this would be to touch on the point that makes many of our theater directors blush like a tender maiden when the conversation turns to certain very natural things in life. After all, the directors must have full houses. And although it is said of art that it is a necessity of every humane existence, it must not be inferred from this that it is also a necessity of every theater director's existence. The box office also belongs among the necessary requisites of a theater. - Therefore, not a word about art! But then one would have to get something else instead of art. For example, it might be possible to have a conversation while watching a "comedy". "Die guten Freundinnen" also demands complete renunciation in this respect. What prompted them to be imported from the neighboring country is likely to remain one of the many unsolved mysteries of German theater policy.

The writer Latour is a fool. He writes plays that he gives to his "good friends" to correct. These women are silly geese, stars of "society" by the way. Nurturing and caring for the writerly fool, giving him their protection, makes their lives worth living. One of them in particular, a banker's wife, sees it as her duty to extend a protective hand over the beloved hero of the pen. Through her influence, he becomes a member of the academy. When his protégé marries a girl who has made works on the art of cooking her favorites in the field of literature, Latour's friend does not want to put an end to her care. Like a mother, she wants to continue caring for the poet. But the non-literary woman takes little pleasure in this. It seems to her that the only appropriate thing to do is to disgust the banker's wife and muse from the house. She energetically demands this of her husband. He has a favorable opportunity to do so. The banker's wife's husband - like most of the characters in this play a fool - has an illegitimate child. The father would like his wife to adopt this child. She would never do so if she knew it was her husband's. But what if she were persuaded that the beloved poet was the father? She succeeds. She takes the supposed offspring into her care instead of the father and leaves the muse's son to his wife, who reads the cookbooks.

This plot could be amusing if the people between whom it takes place weren't too ludicrous. Or, with more modest pretensions, it could also be amusing if the rich sauce of jokes in which the stuff is cooked offered the slightest cause for laughter. Our comedy writer obviously considers banality to be a necessary quality of a good joke. And he has a very poor opinion of theater audiences.

The actors made an honest effort to overcome the dangers that threatened them at every moment. They wanted to avoid the wagging style that the silly thing perhaps best tolerates, but they could not hold on to the comic tone because every word, every action leads away from it. Seeing Rosa Bertens and Jarno oscillating between two styles was the only amusing thing about the evening.