The Little Match Girl I Rumpelstiltskin

Her slippers are gone, the matches unsold. She lights them, and with every flame a door opens. In the glow of the matches, it is not just warmth that awaits. Encounters await: with herself, with her mother, with her father. What appears behind the doors is neither a vision nor a consolation, but a conversation that was long overdue.

The production takes Andersen’s fairy tale as its starting point for a story about what is passed down between generations: not as a heavy burden, but as a game with an open ending.

The roast, the tree and the festive gathering are merely the backdrop here for something greater: the desire to be seen.

Cast:

• Ina Gercke and Katrin Schwingel
• Director: Michael Schwager
• Costumes: Narciss & Goldfaden (Isa Mehnert & Heike Hartmann)
• Set design: Steffen Nitzel
• Lighting: Ravindra Hampf

Rumpelstiltskin

Oh, how good it is that nobody knows … As the title of this fairy tale goes. For who, pray tell, is this utterly eccentric creature who suddenly appears, completely uninvited, in the miller’s daughter’s dark chamber? Who, for heaven’s sake, transforms this dungeon into a stage of international calibre within seconds? Goodness, it’s right on the tip of your tongue.

But it’s also enough to drive a mouse mad: just when you’ve succeeded, everyone shouts ‘More!’ And so the beautiful miller’s daughter spins straw into gold and weeps, and spins, and weeps, and spins. The king, this Grimm-esque Scrooge McDuck, actually demands more and more. So, in her utter desperation, the miller’s daughter promises her firstborn to the lost little man who rushes to her rescue. It’s just a shame that nobody knows his name! Because without it, she’ll never see her little one again.

Will she get her child back in the end? Well, that depends entirely on how carefully the audience has studied the programme.

• Fairy tales for EVERYONE – suitable for ages 4 and over