Dystopian comedy

“Hell on Earth”: Can God save the world?

Scene photo from Maria Lazar's comedy "Hell on Earth".

(Bild: © Birgit Gufler)

Maria Lazar's dystopian comedy "Hell on Earth", discovered in her estate in 2022, receives its world premiere on Saturday at the Kammerspiele under the direction of Anna Marboe.

The writer Maria Lazar (1895-1948), who was expelled from Vienna and came from an assimilated Jewish family, has only been rediscovered in recent years, unlike many writers who were boycotted during the Nazi era - such as Mela Hartwig, Anna Gmeyner and Else Feldmann. From the early 1920s, Lazar, a prolific writer, worked by day as a journalist and translator for renowned Viennese and Swiss newspapers.

At night, she wrote novels - partly because she had to support their child from her marriage to the journalist Friedrich Strindberg.

A total war threatens to destroy everything in the world. Only a good God can help avert the catastrophe. But God has long since retired and withdrawn from his business.

Redakteur Hubert Berger über den Inhalt

Escape to Denmark
The ardent Social Democrat no longer saw any future for herself in an increasingly fascist Austria. In June 1933, she fled to Denmark with Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, where she lived with the playwright and her childhood friend.

She fled to Sweden in 1939 and voluntarily retired from life in 1948 after a protracted, incurable illness.

The comedy is in no way inferior to the bitingly funny dystopias of Jura Soyfer or Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

Redakteur Hubert Berger über das Stück

Maria Lazar's biting, dystopian comedy 
As reported, Landestheater director Irene Girkinger is shifting the focus of content in the 2024/25 season towards "contemporary issues" and "the contemporary". The play "Hell on Earth", which premieres today, Saturday, September 28, in the Kammerspiele under the direction of Anna Marboe, is contemporary.

Lazar's talent as a radical political satirist is already evident in her novel "Die Eingeborenen von Maria Blut", which she wrote in 1935 in exile in Denmark under the pseudonym Esther Grenen. The comedy "Hell on Earth" is in no way inferior to the bitingly funny dystopias of Jura Soyfer or Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

War threatens to destroy everything
Maria Lazar's estate, including several plays, was kept at Lazar's granddaughter's house in Nottingham until November 2022 and was donated to the Austrian Library in Exile at the end of 2022 through the mediation of publisher Albert C. Eibl. The rights to the estate are managed by the Viennese publishing house "Das vergessene Buch".

Briefly on the content of the comedy "Hell on Earth": A total war threatens to destroy everything in the world. Only a good God can help avert the catastrophe. But God has long since retired and withdrawn from his business. Discouraged, he sends Peter, his closest representative, to Geneva with two angels. Should the three of them try to take responsibility? But who will bring peace in the end is not revealed here ...