# 79. “Comedy”

*Drama by Friedrich Elbogen  
Performance at the Neues Theater, Berlin*

The Neues Theater provided a few bad hours with the performance of the dull work "Komödie" by Friedrich Elbogen. For thirty years, a retired major tolerated the half of his marriage who had cheated on him after ten years of cohabitation. He put on a comedy about marriage because he didn't want a scandal to break out before his daughter and granddaughter were married. You don't marry the offspring of divorced spouses. He has achieved what he wanted. Now he can get a divorce. By chance, he comes across the lawyer with whom his granddaughter cheated on his grandson-in-law. This lawyer is supposed to initiate the divorce. Why has the good Major been playing comedy for thirty years? He wanted to create a happy marriage for his granddaughter. Now she has destroyed it herself. That he has dogged his grief for thirty years is in vain. I believe what the author of the play had announced in the Berlin newspapers before the performance to recommend it: that he encountered the incident in his legal practice. But Elbogen is not a playwright. And that is why he has produced a brutal backdrop story, but not a drama, not even a decent play.