To be or not to be

A theater troupe rehearses a Nazi satire until war becomes reality. When a death list from the anti-fascist underground surfaces, the actors suddenly have to become masters of deception.

Real Nazis meet fake Nazis, fake Nazis meet real spies, real spies meet semi-fake double agents—theater becomes a survival strategy. A bizarre comedy of mistaken identity.

The story

Warsaw, 1939, a few weeks before the German masters march into Poland. At the Polskitheater, rehearsals for the next premiere are in full swing. The play: a solid comedy about the Gestapo. The stage set: a hyperrealistic simulation of Gestapo headquarters. The costumes: astonishingly realistic Gestapo uniforms. Heil Hitler! Heal Hitler! It's going to be fun! Or maybe not. Even before the Nazi satire premieres, it is banned by the Polish censorship authorities. Hamlet is added to the program as a replacement, much to the delight of Josef Tura, the lead actor and showman with a huge stage ego. All the more hurtful for Tura that in every performance, the same spectator—young, attractive, wearing a pilot's uniform—leaves the auditorium at the cue "To be or not to be." Only Maria Tura, Josef's wife, who is also an actress, knows where the dashing pilot disappears to: into her dressing room. CUT.

Warsaw, 1940. The Polish Theater is closed, and the ensemble hopes for real coffee and better times. Then the dashing pilot reappears. This time, not on an amorous mission, but on a political one: resistance against the regime! The troupe joins the mission and, dressed as Nazis, finally performs what they rehearsed before the war. But unlike before the war, now it's really a matter of to be or not to be, of life and death.

At the Tyrolean State Theater, we are not playing for our lives. And that's a good thing! And to keep it that way, we want to laugh at fascism until it is finally laughed to death.

The material

New York, 1938. Hungarian playwright and exile Melchior Lengyel writes a brutally funny comedy about the Nazis entitled Poland Is Not Yet Lost. At the request of his friend Ernst Lubitsch, who emigrated from Germany to the US in 1922, Lengyel adapts the play into a screenplay. Comedy specialist Edwin Justus Mayer is hired as dialogue designer. In 1942, the film is released in US cinemas under the title To Be or Not to Be. A New York Times critic writes: "The way the film is, one has the strange feeling that Mr. Lubitsch is Nero playing the violin while Rome burns." Today, To Be or Not to Be is considered a film classic and—in Nick Whitby's 2008 adaptation—a stage blockbuster. Mindful of the political upheavals of our time, it almost seems as if we are once again playing the violin while Rome burns. But as Lubitsch said at the time: "I am not Nero. And I only play the violin because it annoys the fire."