Guests are jammed in the anteroom and in front of the entrance.

But Edgar Langer has to ask for patience.

Will take a bit longer.

The heroines of the evening arrived late at the Traumstern cinema, whose co-boss is Langer and which serves as a stage on Tuesday evening.

For Pussy Riot.

To be precise, the quartet and its helpers didn't knock on the door until six-fifteen.

The result: construction, sound check and light test as a tour de force.

But here in Lich, in the heart of nature, so to speak, the artists are credited with mitigating circumstances that they cannot hope for in their Russian homeland.

Thorsten Winter

Business editor and internet coordinator in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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But why are Pussy Riot coming to the central Hessian province with Masha Alyokhina, who has just come from Russia in an adventurous way?

Especially since Langer says: "We know we're too small for something like that." If Traumstern, with its comfortable armchairs, wasn't a cinema, it would pass for a small club.

In the search for an answer, the everyday adage "It's good to know someone who knows you" comes true.

For two decades, Langer has known the man who leads the entire European tour of the performance troupe.

“Make a political statement”

Irrespective of this, his team wants to send a political signal: against Russian President Putin and his people - but also against those who want to ban Russian artists from the stages in Germany as a reaction to the war in Ukraine.

Then suddenly a police patrol enters the cinema.

An officer has a form in his hand.

As a precaution, surely no neighbor would have complained that the music might be too loud?

But after a few minutes everything is clear.

"Let's hope that everything stays peaceful," says the policeman.

It's no coincidence that there are people who understand Putin in central Hesse, too.

But as a program cinema operator, Langer is used to the risk.

Especially in this case: "We signed the contract when Alyokhina had just been released from prison - and then she still had to get out of Russia." Ultimately, however, the risk was worth it: the show was sold out quickly.

Their reputation precedes Pussy Riot.

The audience warmly welcomes the quartet, which includes Alyokhina, Diana Burkot and Olga Borisova as well as Anton Ponomarev, a saxophonist who appears on stage in a red dress.

The man with long curly hair and a full beard comes from jazz and what he will play mostly sounds very free.

Good sound sounds different.

But what Pussy Riot have to offer is not a concert in the narrower sense, despite the percussion and synthesizer.

One in a wedding dress, the other in a blazer and bra

Rather, the quartet offers a kind of multimedia show, a tour d´horizon through their own history and contemporary Russian history.

Images of demonstrations and violence by security forces, rehearsals and provocative performances such as the famous performance in a Russian Orthodox church a good ten years ago, which the state punished with imprisonment, are lined up on the screen.

Impressions from the adventurous court hearing against Alyokhina are available as a graphic novel.

Even as a performance, this is sometimes difficult to bear, especially since the sounds from the instruments explore the pain limits in the audience.

On stage they act out the humiliations and insults suffered by Alyokhina in a wedding dress and Borisova in a black blazer and bra.

They scream in agony into the microphones and the saxophone screeches and wails.

Above all, Pussy Riot send clear political messages to Russia with staccato chants and rhythmically outstretched fists.

"You will not be successful if you are not connected to this system - but you can change the system," reads one.

"Anyone can be Pussy Riot," another.

"For Freedom - Yours and Mine," a third.

It is fitting that they fade in the iconic image of Marianne, the national figure of the French Republic as a symbol of freedom, and later portraits of political prisoners in Russia who are deprived of freedom.

But suddenly the film stops after an hour and the lights go out.

Silence.

But then a "Tenk ju" sounds from the stage, spoken almost shyly.