German premiere

The stage is flanked by two huge Austrian flags, fatally reminiscent of the monumental flags of a bygone dark era. The von Trüb couple, who fled from the Nazis to the USA after the “Anschluss” of Austria in 1938, want to return to their old home. Officer Frickl tries to prevent this by all means. For the son of that Gauleiter who once persecuted this family of musicians has a score to settle with the two old people.

At the age of 14, Nikolaus Habjan visited a workshop of the already legendary puppet maker and performer Neville Tranter in Graz for the first time. “We wanted to do something together and I wanted an Austrian theme,” Neville Tranter said 15 years later. He was born in Warwick / Australia in 1955 and now lives in Amsterdam. His best-known plays include “Molière” (1998) and “Schicklgruber alias Adolf Hitler” (2003). “Babylon” (2017) can be seen a few days before euro-scene Leipzig at 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 enjoyed great success as the “Trapp Family Singers”. Both the famous 1959 Broadway musical “The Sound of Music” by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein (lyrics) and its brilliant 1965 film adaptation by Robert Wise (see p. 39) can be traced back to this family fate. The play by Neville Tranter and Nikolaus Habjan uses irony, wit, poetry and numerous puppets to present a migration parody full of black humor at breakneck speed.