This man who is struck by fate, who briefly loses his fear of God and in the end regains it all the more strongly - yes, is it even a happy ending?

We will see.

In any case, this man's name is Mendel Singer.

That's what Joseph Roth called him, the main character of his novel "Job", first published in 1930 as a serialized novel in the "Frankfurter Zeitung".

Now Hiob, alias Mendel, is coming onto the stage at the Schauspiel Frankfurt.

With director Johanna Wehner, however, who wrote and is now staging her own version of Mendel's wanderings through Russia and America, through suffering and loss, Rothsche's Job is called Mendel only M.

Eva Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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M like Matthew.

Matthias Redlhammer, who will gradually become Mendel in the polyphonic canon of sentences and stories and, like his teammates Caroline Dietrich, Heidi Ecks, Stefan Graf, Agnes Kammerer, Nils Kreutinger and Christoph Pütthoff, will initially only consist of the letters of his own first name .

And from sentences that Wehner almost all took from the original text of the novel.

But as if wandering through space, the bodies of the actors become a polyphony that seems very contemporary.

An undramatic person

"It leads to a pull. I hope that there will be," says Redlhammer.

Giving the idea of ​​plasticity, the words flesh on the stage - that's ultimately the reason why "Job" is now being played.

Otherwise, says Redlhammer with a tiny smile, one could simply distribute the book among the viewers.

Redlhammer is not someone who speaks with conviction.

Who carefully weighs and thinks about what and how to formulate.

And with quiet self-mockery says he's thinking about it - but it's doubtful whether anything will come of it.

It's not a role you can slip into that he's playing now.

But work on a text that is not easy to acquire and that can keep you busy even after rehearsals.

How does one endure what is happening to this Mendel, where does the doubt set in with such a believer?

A word associated with "Job" is also used by Matthias Redlhammer when he provides information about his career: "fate".

However, in a completely undramatic way.

How he doesn't tend to make a fuss at all.

In any case, his paths have led him to Frankfurt several times, and he even took his first aptitude test in this building.

In the directorship of Elisabeth Schweeger, he made guest appearances for three seasons, and now he's settled at the Schauspiel Frankfurt, so to speak, in the fifth season and also in the 41st year of the profession.

Redlhammer's love of theater originated in this house - "that's how life goes," he says.

First meandering, then straight ahead

Born in Cologne in 1957, his parents moved with him to Hofheim am Taunus when he was nine.

"Boring" is the word that comes to mind.

Excursions to the theater were not boring, but extremely exciting: the mother donated ten marks, "that was enough for a student ticket, the train and a coke during the break," Redlhammer remembers his trips as a student.

He saw the electrifying spectacle of the Palitzsch era, remembers Barbara Sukowa, Christian Redl, Klaus Wennemann - "that was wonderful".

But the idea of ​​becoming an actor himself did not occur to him for years.

The penny dropped in a theater seminar, while studying German at the University of Marburg, years later.

That you can learn that!

By then, the high school graduate had already completed his community service and a year and a half as a "horticultural laborer" in the Palmengarten.

"The doubt as to whether you can do it," he says, was always great for him.

But also the longing to do something practical, something difficult.

Redlhammer does not say “creative”.

He might have been a journalist or a cameraman, he says.

But back then in Marburg he decided to go to an acting school.

As meandering as Redlhammer's path may have started, it went pretty straight from there: Bochum drama school, first engagement in Bochum with Klaus Peymann, move with him to the Burgtheater in Vienna.

And because one's nature and paths are like that, he came back to the Bochum theater in 2010, where Anselm Weber was director until he moved to Frankfurt.

It can stay that way for Redlhammer, who is now 65 years old.

During the pandemic, he was one of the people who didn't miss the appearance that much.

It was good for him, being permanently employed and continued to be paid, he says seriously.

It is also a gift to have other skills and interests.

For many years he has been photographing, combining new, abstract photographs from his own vintage slides with all sorts of alienations, and has also exhibited.

At some point he wants to present his work on his own website.

When there is time and energy for it.

“It's a lot about blur.

That suits me very well.

That one does not commit oneself, but in vague

"Hiob" premieres on May 7th at the Schauspiel Frankfurt, further performances from May 15th.