Pubic hair & tornadoes

Vacation horror: The four of them (un)pack their suitcases

The "Krone" spoke to the four actors in the play just before the official premiere at CasaNova in Vienna.

(Bild: Tischler Andreas/Andreas Tischler / Vienna Press)

The play - and thus the theater's first in-house production, written and realized by Leo Maria Bauer - "South Sea Fever" celebrated its premiere at Vienna's CasaNova on Tuesday evening. The unfortunate vacation of the involuntary travel group around Reinhard Nowak, Nadja Maleh, Angelika Niedetzky and Andreas Steppan seemed to entertain the crowd perfectly. 

"A turbulent comedy with fast-paced storylines and varied punchlines that are flung back and forth. There's singing, it's funny, it's dramatic," was how Reinhard Nowak summed up "South Sea Fever" shortly before its official premiere on Wednesday evening at CasaNova.

Murder and manslaughter along with uproarious laughter
Colleague Angelika Niedetzky underlined this density of punchlines once again: "After the previews, you can really say that people are laughing uproariously" - so much so that even she and the rest of the comedy quartet, Nadja Maleh and Andreas Steppan, were amazed.

Maleh knows in the Krone interview what the success, which was foreseeable, could be based on: "It's also the topic that naturally interests everyone. Two couples meet by chance and go on vacation together. Of course, this is followed by murder and manslaughter, and everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. Actually, almost everyone can identify with this at some point in the play."

Nowak, who recently celebrated his 60th birthday, knows exactly what his colleague is talking about: "I've already experienced this in my private life, we went on vacation with a couple we were friends with and then weren't such good friends afterwards. It's hard enough to spend time harmoniously with your own family," he laughed. It soon turned out that things were going to get much worse ... 

Entertainers Tricky Niki (left) and Gerald Fleischhacker were invited to the premiere and were only too happy to attend.

(Bild: Tischler Andreas/Andreas Tischler / Vienna Press)

Tornadoes and pubic hair
Although her Syrian-Tyrolean colleague Nadja Maleh has so far been spared unpleasant travel companions, Mother Nature has not always been kind to her. During a trip to Thailand, she had to spend three days alone in her room and was still able to speak of luck in misfortune: "While I was sitting in the bungalow, things were flying around outside. Coincidentally, the most violent tornado of the last 60 years formed right on the coast of the island where I was staying."

Fortunately, this was not one of the usual disappointments that can occur during a long-awaited break. "No," Niedetzky knows for sure, "The classic is, of course, when the room doesn't look the way it's supposed to! I've never found a room as destroyed as the one in the play. But I have seen pubic hair lying around ..." 

The audience - including fellow cabaret artists Tricky Niki, Gerald Fleischhacker and Thomas Strobl - fared much better, having a great time with the mishaps, arguments and ludicrous banter on stage.