In 1997, an association was founded in the German city of Verden on the river Aller, located between Bremen and Hannover in Lower Saxony, to arrange large-scale theatre productions, in the form of summer festivals, in front of the city`s large cathedral (Verdener Domfestspiele e.V.). The festival takes places every few years. On such occasions, the stage, some 40m wide, and the auditorium seating around 800 spectators, as well as tents for catering and for the cast of around 100 people to prepare, are put up specially for the occasion. Usually, some eleven performances are put on from mid-July to early August. The author, director and some of the design and technical teams are professionals, as are the actors of the main roles. The majority of staff and actors involved, however, are amateur performers.
Since 2011, Bremen-based Hans König has written, directed, and produced the plays for the festival, and composed the music. Across his productions, he has researched striking events or developments in the history of Verden (just under 30000 inhabitants in the city itself, and 141000 in the administrative district). For the 2025 production, Die Zündholzfrau (literally translated: The Matchstickwoman), planning started in 2022, rehearsals proper in February 2025, with 24.7. as the opening night.
The play is set in Verden of 1878. The play’s central character is industrialist Willibert Stendel, owner of a factory of matches, a factory of bags, a publishing house, and a theatre. Established Verden society considers the social climber with suspicion and concern. The play manages to successfully paint a broad and interweaving picture of both the personal as the social and political landscapes. Stendel is shown as suffering psychologically from the trauma of domestic violence in his childhood and youth perpetrated by his father against his mother and himself. He compensates insecurity when in the company of the Verden establishment, and plays an inferior role in his own family life, in particular because his father-in-law is Verden’s leading judge, and as such the core of that very establishment. By coincidence he meets Klara, a worker in his matches factory, and they fall in love. While Stendel himself and many of the establishment characters are based on historical characters and events, the love plot is fictional. König has introduced and developed it very cleverly to raise audience interest.
Overall, the plot is wide-ranging, encompassing motives of anti-semitism, the growing awareness of the factory workers of their suppression, and their willingness to stand up together for their rights and safer, better paid working conditions, and the government’s related concerns about and active suppression of the growing social democrat movement. König demonstrates a great sense of the vast stage space to choreograph both intimate scenes between only few characters, as well as the crowd scenes, with around 100 people. Entrances and exits were executed swiftly and elegantly, sometimes accompanied by music and sound effects. Special effects were sometimes striking, such as an explosion in the factory. The plot was developed efficiently, sometimes using voice-over comments from Stendel. With three and a half hours duration including interval, the production was unconventionally long for a theatre context, but time flew by, there was not a single moment of lagging tension.
With its breadth of approach, and the focus, within that vast scope, on individual issues and concerns, the production reminded me vividly of the Royal Shakespeare Company´s 1980 8-hour Nicholas Nickleby, complete with the actor of the mayor of Verden, Uwe Pekau, coming across as a lovely combination of Edward Petherbridge, who played Newman Noggs in the RSC production, and Peter Benson (as Bernie Scripps in the long-running ITV series Heartbeat in the UK).
Uwe Pekau and colleagues on a lovingly restored period vehicle. © Janina Fuchs
The action of the play revolved around the central character, Willibert Stendel. He was present on stage for most of the performance, strikingly dressed in an of-white suit. Andreas Brendel lived up fully to the demands the play and production made on him. He found the right means to express his character`s many different facets, side by side, overlapping, and influencing each other. His Stendel was competent in his business transactions but also daring and not adverse to taking risks; he gambled, was successful in that as well, took such success for granted, at times feeling that he could do nothing wrong. Brendel managed to make the sudden shifts in Stendel`s well-being into haunting moments in the production: we feel with the character`s suffering. Those are the sudden but recurring moments when he is plagued by what comes across to the others as a bout of severe headache, when he has in fact flashbacks of the instances of domestic violence he experienced in his childhood and youth. Brendel also manages to extract a few laughs from the audience for the ways he confronts and intentionally shocks the members of the establishment with his actions or his words. Franziska Mencz was equally excellent as Stendel`s establishment wife, Eugenia. She was very convincing as the sophisticated young woman, well-versed in the intricacies of high society gossip and slander, with perfect manners and born to wear evening outfits and move about elegantly at large social events, in particular as their host.
Vania Brendel played Klara, a worker at the match factory owned by Stendel. Right from the start of the play she quotes Marx and reveals herself to be a revolutionary, seeking to motivate the other workers at the factory to take industrial action to achieve safer working conditions (particularly in relation to the dangers with phosphorus used for making the matches) and more appropriate working hours (less the then norm of 14 hours per day). Vania Brendel`s Klara combined feminine vulnerability and charm with a sharp mind, a combination which made her particularly dangerous for the employers and others concerned with the threat of rebellion. She was spied on, her relationship or affair with Stendel was revealed, she was framed for a murder she did not commit, and Stendel stood by her, thus losing his place in society.
Time flew by in this highly entertaining 3 ½ – hour performance – summer festival theatre at its best.
For other reviews from German summer theatre festivals 2025, go here.
This post was written by the author in their personal capacity.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.
