The hills are alive

The stage is flanked by two huge Austrian flags that remind you in a fatal way of the monumental rows of flags from a past dark epoch. The married couple von Trüb, who fled from the Nazis to the USA after the “Anschluss” Österreichs in 1938, want to return to their old homeland. The public official Frickl tries to stop this with all possible methods – because the son of this Gauleiter, who once had pursued this family of musicians, has a score to settle with the two old people.

At the age of 14, Nikolaus Habjan participated in a workshop by Neville Tranter in Graz for the first time, who was already then a legendary puppet builder and puppeteer. “We wanted to do something together and it was my wish to have an Austrian subject” said Neville Tranter 15 years later. He was born in Warwick / Australia in 1955, and now lives in Amsterdam. Some of his most famous pieces are “Molière” (1998) and “Schicklgruber alias Adolf Hitler” (2003). “Babylon” (2017) will be shown a few days before euro-scene Leipzig at the Westflügel Leipzig.

“The hills are alive” is based on a true story: the Trapp family founded a chamber choir with their ten children in Salzburg and emigrated to the USA in 1938 where they then had great success as the “Trapp Family Singers”. The famous Broadway musical “The sound of music” by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein (texts) from 1959 as well as its brilliant film version by Robert Wise from 1965 both are based on this family’s fate. With irony, wit, poetry and numerous puppets, the piece by Neville Tranter and Nikolaus Habjan shows a migration parody in a high tempo full of black humour.