Herbert Achternbusch

“As non-existent as Munich is, as existent Munich can never be, unless there is beer.” Stubbornly clever Hick von Buillon and Michael von Fraaß, the two strange reality investigators in Herbert Achternbusch’s new play insist on this assumption: the city of Munich is a place of pretence, illusion, fantasy and numerous deceptions, a pure figment of the imagination. They missed out on going to the pub and getting drunk, the thing making Munich possible in the first place, only once – can it ever be rectified? During this journey through their probably only day of sobriety these truth-seekers become participants in a dream journey, because when the pretence of Munich disappears, suddenly a whole other, confusing landscape emerges: “We are only travelling around the Fortunate Isles. Upper Bavaria, La Mancha, Peloponnese, we are travelling around. Machtlfing, Erling, we are travelling around. And when we are sitting in front of the swampy pond, we are travelling around the Fortunate Isles.”
In Hick’s opinion, the bliss that they are hoping and searching for can only be granted by a Greek goddess, definitely not by his own wife Marjy, who is leading a stubborn fight about shameful conditions in rented flats with the Munich communal government for him. But even Marjy’s devotion can’t hold Hick, who is searching for his goddess Daphne. “Where you sense something new, accept it, keep it in your soul, it becomes the Andechs of your heart and the blue goddess can come into existence.” (Münchner Kammerspiele)