Meier also performs music-hall ditties with a fabulous don’t-mind-if-I-do-ishness, speaking a language that is surely the most unimpeachable there is, for he lets it drop, nugget by nugget as it were, such that a person listening to him might take a notion to kneel at the man’s feet to gather up the morsels. The tone of this voice — I’ve studied it in considerable depth — reproduces in sound the approximate impression made on the eye by the progress of a snail, so resplendently languorous, so lazy, so brown, so very reptant, so slimy, so gluey, and so terribly if-not-today-why-not-tomorrow. A pleasure pure and simple. I can recommend it in good conscience.
This Meier, one should know if one does not know it already, plays a theater usher, the role he most shines in, a figure with horrifying trousers, a tall hat, a stuck-on nose, a box beneath his arm, holes at his elbows, cigar in mouth, and not just a lip on him but a proper maw, and a bundle of bad jokes on his dunderhead tongue. This figure is beyond delightful. I for my part have seen him, just a sec, I think a good fifty times now and still have not tired of the act. Of course not! One never tires of gazing upon excellence.
A small stage, harsh lighting, upon the stage a table and beside it a chair — this is to represent the office of a management director. The manager herself, a slender, youthful female, announces that she now has everything she needs to launch a cycle of performances, the only thing still lacking is an usher, this is a problem, but she has already had advertisements placed in the newspapers and is eager to see who will respond.
And who should enter now like a wraith from the underworld? Meier! Why of course, devil take it, what else was to be expected, but look, the wonderful part is that you nonetheless find yourself utterly astounded by the novelty with which this Meier spelled with an “ei” is capable of trouser-legging his way up the stairs, in a manner that leaves you no choice but to think he must have done something it would be improper to say aloud in good company.
He reports to the horrified lady, who surely has read Oscar Wilde, with a circumlocutoriness that would be unsuitable on any other lips, he asks and does the most foolish things, then asks yet other things, is about to take his leave, then enters once more, leaves again, but only in order to appear all over again, always with greater impudence, always more indecorous in his demeanor, speech, manner, gestures, tone, and bearing. And all the while he displays the most astonishing talent for uttering some well-timed bit of filth, and uttering it how? How is something you have to have heard with your own ears. Evening after evening, a good twenty or thirty patrons, on Saturdays and Sundays eighty, one hundred, or one hundred and fifteen, or even one more than that come to hear him.
I’ve already pointed out that Meier can also make a tragic impression. In order to achieve this, he quite simply changes his voice and throws his hands in the air, a strategy that until now has always worked. Then he becomes a madman, a King Leer — not Lear but Leer, because during this production he looks at the audience in such a way that all present do exactly what is described in the line: And in haste betook them home. I alone am in the habit of remaining. And then I experience what it means to feel terror when suddenly the voice of a human being becomes a towering edifice, as is the case with Meier’s, an edifice at whose open windows and doors some unknown monstrosity is bellowing. How I shake with fear on each and every occasion, and how glad I am when this Meier with all his terrifying “oho”s and “ha”s and “hey”s once more becomes simply a Meier with an “ei.”
1907
Four Amusements
On the top floor at Wertheim’s, where people have coffee, something delectable is currently on view: the dramatic poet Seltmann. Perched atop a small cane stool upon an elevated pedestal, an easy target for passing glances, he ceaselessly hammers, nails, pounds, and cobbles together — as it appears to all observing him — lines of blank verse. The small, rectangular pedestal is tastefully wreathed with dark-green fir twigs. The poet is clad respectably: tailcoat, patent-leather shoes, and white cravat are all represented, and no one need feel embarrassed to give this man his full attention. What’s marvelous, though, is the splendid shock of russet hair arching from Seltmann’s head past his shoulders and plummeting to the floor. It resembles the mane of a lion. Who is this Seltmann? Will he liberate us from the ignominy of seeing our theater in the hands of so many saltpeter factories? Will he write our national drama? Will he someday appear to be the one we’ve been pining for so black-puddingishly? In any case we must be grateful to the directors of the Wertheim department store for putting Seltmann on display.
That the theater is gradually losing its best and most sterling capacities can, to our great chagrin, be gathered from a letter that celebrated actress Gertrud Eysoldt has addressed to us. She informs us that she will soon be opening a corset shop on Kantstrasse at the corner of Joachimstaler Strasse, where she will establish herself exclusively as a businesswoman. What an odd resolve, and how regrettable! The actor Kayssler also intends to abscond, and this for the reason that, as we hear, he feels that under the prevailing temporalities it is more appropriate to stand behind the bar in a pub than portray figurines upon the stage. He’s said to have taken over a little bar in one of the city’s eastern districts that will be opening on May first, and is already looking forward, as several people report, to dispensing beer, washing glasses, preparing sandwiches, serving up kippers, and boot-blacking drunken louts out the door in the wee hours. A crying shame. We, however, deeply regret seeing two so highly admired and esteemed artists betraying their art in such fashion. Let us hope that such conduct does not become a trend.
At the Kammerspiele a minor change was instituted at the eleventh hour. The management dressed up the dramaturgical staff in handsome light-blue tailcoats complete with large silver buttons. We declare this attractive, for it strikes us as appropriate. The ushers have been abolished, and the dramaturges — who after all have nothing else to do on performance nights — take the ladies’ coats and show the theater’s patrons to their seats. They also open doors and dispense all sorts of trifling but crucial bits of information. On their legs they now wear long, thick, buff-colored, knee-high gaiters, and they are already quite adept at handing out programs with an elegant bow and offering opera glasses. In the provinces they would also distribute leaflets, but here in Berlin this is unnecessary. In short, no critic shall ever again have cause to wonder what a dramaturge is and what sorts of duties he fulfills. They are now exerting themselves to the utmost, and in future one will have no choice but to leave them in peace.
Wishing to rid himself once and for all of the eternal grumbling and the constant reproach that he only ever stages sets rather than plays, director Reinhardt has hit on the idea of, in future, simply having his plays take place before a backdrop of white linens. Naturally his dramaturges couldn’t resist letting the cat out of the bag, and he will be astonished if not indignant to see us trumpeting forth this news today already. White linens! Well, do they have to be snow-white? Could they not be worn, say, for a day and a half by some unknown lady giant from the sideshow? Then the various bits of the set would exude an assuredly ravishing fragrance of thighs that could only do the critics good, as it would cause them to forget where they were sitting and beguile all their sharpest senses. Seriously. Reinhardt’s idea strikes us as quite promising, in other words brilliant. Against the white cloth, the faces and ghostly figures of the actors and actresses will make a strikingly colorful impression. But will Reinhardt also succeed in gaining acceptance for this notion at the Hoftheater?