Theater "Biedermann and the Arsonists" in the slapstick trap
From Lucerne to Basel to Zurich: several Swiss theaters have put Max Frisch's stage classic "Biedermann and the Arsonists" on their repertoires as the play of the moment. However, they run the risk of falling into the slapstick trap.
16.10.2025, 14:14
SDA
The world is on fire. The USA is threatening to degenerate into a dictatorship, Russia has long been one and the threat of an unavoidable climate catastrophe hangs over all of this, while almost everyone stands idly by. Against this backdrop, Max Frisch's parable "Biedermann and the Arsonists", which premiered in 1958, appears to be the drama of the hour.
It tells the story of Gottlieb Biedermann, who harbors two arsonists and thus becomes an accomplice to his own downfall.
In his "Lehrstück ohne Lehre", Frisch has avoided any reference to current events, leaving plenty of room for interpretation. How did or do Swiss theaters deal with this?
At Schauspielhaus Zürich, outgoing co-director Nicolas Stemann bid farewell in 2024 with a "Biedermann" in which he had the theater itself burned down. This was read in many places as a kind of reckoning with the middle-class subscription audience, which had been very hostile towards the artistic duo of Benjamin von Blomberg and Nicolas Stemann.
Klamauk in Lucerne and Basel
At the Lucerne Theater, director Corinna von Rad transformed the play into an over-the-top grotesque in a bright pink Barbie world. Mr. and Mrs. Biedermann come across as so clichéd and silly that you almost gleefully take note of the fact that their mendacious illusory world is going up in flames.
Director Stefan Pucher also used slapstick as a stylistic device at Theater Basel on Wednesday. He staged the parable as a horror comedy with ghost train décor. While the ultimately trivializing grotesque takes its course on the Basel stage close to Frisch's text, warning signs such as "What justifies your silence today?" pass by on the stage ramp.
This gives Pucher the impression that he has not been able to extract enough explosive power from the play and thus also from his production itself.
Is it even possible to stage Frisch's parable today without turning it into a slapstick grotesque? This question could not be answered in Zurich, Lucerne and Basel. Perhaps it will be possible in Winterthur: the Theater Kanton Zürich there has also put a new production of "Biedermann und die Brandstifter" on the program. The premiere is on October 23.
