In German and Ukrainian, with German, English, and Ukrainian surtitles

In the mid-1920s, Joseph Roth visited his old homeland: Lviv, then Lemberg, and the Galician hinterland, located in present-day Ukraine. A few years earlier, the writer and reporter, born in 1894 in the predominantly Jewish town of Brody, had written in the Berliner Zeitung: “Sometimes a nation becomes modern. Now it’s the Ukrainians.” A good hundred years later, the People’s Theatre follows in Joseph Roth’s footsteps to Lviv and, as in Vienna, presents an international co-production, a revue against war, gloom, and despair.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon that a nation, as soon as it loses its independence, begins to reign supreme in operettas and variety shows,” Roth continues, coining the term “Ukrainomania” in this text. His words reveal more than just the sarcastic wit of an excellent feuilletonist, who would soon become a celebrated portraitist of a world and an existence caught between war and a semblance of peace with bestsellers like “The Spider’s Web,” “Hotel Savoy,” “Radetzky March,” and “Hiob.”

But who was Roth, born in 1894, really? Even on May 30, 1939, when he was buried in exile in Paris, there was disagreement at his grave as to whether a Jew or a Christian, a monarchist or a socialist, a misanthrope, a great realist, or simply an alcoholic was being honored there. UKRAINOMANIA – this will be the revue of his life, a pandemonium populated by survivors, “hotel patriots,” and other characters from Joseph Roth’s work. A dialogue between East and West, between ensembles from Lviv and Vienna, balancing between gallows humor and grief.