About the work
“Kabale und Liebe – allerdings mit anderem Text und auch anderer Melodie” (roughly “Intrigue and Love – but with different words and a different tune”) is a musical theatre evening by Barbara Bürk and Clemens Sienknecht based on Friedrich Schiller’s bourgeois tragedy of 1784. The two directed it themselves; it was first performed on 1 February 2025 at the Deutsches SchauSpielHaus in Hamburg. Sienknecht also takes part as a musician and performer.
Plot
Schiller’s drama about the nobleman Ferdinand and the musician’s daughter Luise, whose love is destroyed by the intrigue of his father and the secretary Wurm, is told as a live broadcast of a fictional radio station. In a studio with a mixing desk, sound-effects station and turntable, the ensemble plays key scenes with partly exaggerated original text, interrupted by commercials, a quiz, a weather report and jingles. Newly arranged pop songs, for example by Cat Stevens, comment on the action, and invented minor characters appear alongside the figures of the play.
Cultural significance
The evening continues the series of radio-show adaptations that Bürk and Sienknecht began in 2015 with “Effi Briest”, which was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2016, and continued with “Anna Karenina” and “Die Nibelungen”. Hamburg critics largely received it as cleverly constructed musical entertainment, while criticising some flat puns. The production has also toured to other theatres, such as the Nationaltheater Mannheim.