New program

Alfred Dorfer: punchline champion with character

Currently in the (sold-out) Stadtsaal: Alfred Dorfer

(Bild: Moritz Schell)

"Gleich" is the name of Alfred Dorfer's latest program. He has now celebrated his Vienna premiere and shows that he is right at the top of the Champions League of German-speaking cabaret artists.

Good Bordeaux and Burgundy vintages are similar to Alfred Dorfer: they also get better and better. What the cabaret artist achieves in his new program "Gleich", parodying, imitating, grimacing, acting, jumping and dancing, probably no one else in this small country can do. Dorfer offers a firework display of punchlines that sometimes slaps your thigh loudly, sometimes quietly oozes, sometimes makes you think.

He doesn't take "solo program" quite literally, he plays several characters with different looks, voices and stories: the Bohemian grandma, the German art curator, the arrogant young doctor, the Hungarian Orbán apologist and theater lighting man, the senior ghetto CEO, the 60s SPÖ functionary. Dorfer can do them all.

Kidney stones versus parent-teacher conferences 
At the beginning, he limps onto the stage with a prosthesis, saying that "sport is dangerous". "So the showers." He gets rid of the thing again: "Spontaneous healing. But let's be honest: you liked me more when I was injured." The humor level remains high throughout the evening: "Kidney stones are almost as bad as childbirth, except that you don't have to go to a parent-teacher conference later."

The cabaret artist's everyday life shines through when he describes hotels from the hotelier's perspective: "Tripadvisor is like Karl May, writing without having been there." The evening room service gentleman, who wants to put Mannerschnitten on the hotel beds, asks in Dorfer's dialogue in response to the answer "I don't like sweets": "Would you rather I empty goulash soup onto your pillow?"

A groan from Neubau 
In contrast to some of his contemporaries, Dorfer appreciates the nuances, leaves room for his own reflection, keeps his distance from everyone in politics and also jokes about the supposed "good guys": "You say something, but you don't mean it: irony. You can mean nothing and still say something. That's called Twitter."

And when he preaches in favor of democracy at the end, he is ultimately tormented by the choice between "agitators and losers". He interprets the individual groans from the audience as a classic reaction from the neighboring green district of Neubau. Dorfer simply plays in the German-speaking Champions League. Right at the top.