107. “Our Käthchen”

Comedy play by Theodor Herzl
Performance at the Deutsches Volkstheater, Vienna

Dr. Theodor Herzl, the witty feuilletonist who has been drawing his delicate arabesques of thought around difficult and far-reaching problems since recent times, recently performed a play at the Deutsches Volkstheater in which the two sides of his literary nature clash rather embarrassingly in all their blatant incongruity. The play is called "Unser Käthchen" and is called a comedy. But its hilarity lies exclusively in isolated wordplay in the dialog and a few conventional stage situations that have nothing to do with the actual content. The basic thrust of the play is quite satirical. It is intended to mock a certain type of bourgeois marriage that builds a deceptive peace on the weakness and stupidity of the man and the imperiousness, vanity and deceitfulness of the woman. The woman knows nothing of the man's sufferings and worries, she does not care about him and seeks her happiness where she finds it. Käthchen, the second daughter of a woman, comes from such an illegitimate happiness, in whom the author wants to portray the type of woman against whom his comedy is directed. The father has returned after a long stay in Australia, where he has fled, disgusted by his own sin and that of his wife, and now wants to give part of his fortune to his child. As a result, a young lawyer, who is supposed to make this donation as inconspicuously as possible, is drawn into the family, falls in love with Käthchen and marries her, in spite of the deterrent examples he sees in the marriages of Käthchen's mother and sister. - That is the whole plot. As can be seen, it does not have a single dramatic moment, and the scenic realization possibly reinforces this lack. The broad and in places very banal depiction of the family life of these cuckolded and henpecked heroes moves from act to act in an unchanged, viscous manner. Towards the end, the author attempts a clear intensification of the intended tendency by contrasting the immoral bourgeoisie with a few honorable workers who are brought in from the street especially for this purpose. But even this highly untrue and stale contrast is more disturbing than beneficial. The play made a lot of noise when it was first performed, as personal supporters and opponents of the author tried to impose their party viewpoint by force. Nobody really liked the play. The performance was competent; it added nothing to the play, but certainly took nothing away from it either. Miss Retty solved her task of portraying mother and daughter with delicacy and grace.