The star hisses, the donkey screeches, the little ox grumbles, little Jesus smacks his lips.

The angel drives, the shepherds shawm, the horses of the three kings whinny.

When their camels then farted, the audience in the cantata hall of the Frankfurt Volksbühne exploded.

Claudia Schulke

Freelance author in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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With Hugo Ball and his Dadaist nativity play, Michael Quast and Ricarda Klingelhöfer finally conquered the audience.

This "sound concert" was the highlight of the "Frankforder Christmas" at the Großer Hirschgraben.

Not only artistically and humorously, but also from a theological point of view.

Because in the last auditory sequence, Ball/Quast let hammers and nails crack: the nativity scene and the cross are carved from the same piece of wood.

An evening that should become a tradition

The literary-musical evening began cheerfully in front of a golden drapery as if from angel wings: with Lothar Zenetti's Christmas Gospel based on Matthew and Luke in Hessian dialect.

Or as Quast said: "Christmas as it really was." Probably not even the arch-heretic Marcion, who, according to the latest religious-historical research, is credited with an original gospel, knew that first Luke, then Matthew and the others around the middle of the second Century should have oriented.

The New Testament scholars protest, but Zenetti knows: "When is that so," said the handmaid of the Lord to the announcing angel Gabriel, and then shepherds and hosts had "a great joy".

And everyone who sat in the Volksbühne, too.

If the angel Aurelius from Edith Schreiber-Wicke's story of the same name had come down as the Christmas wishing angel, it would not have fallen on deaf ears, as it did with its author.

More than three free wishes were fulfilled: for example with Erich Fries' poem about two crushed little people in love who look deep "into the currants", or with Carl Zuckmayer's pithy "Christmas Carol", which once again conjured up a Christmas zoo.

Hanns Dieter Hüsch went into full life: "Everyone is nervous" - before Christmas Eve, and after the presents: "Everyone is offended." Because they were the wrong presents and the cake was too sweet.

When the Cantate Hall was built in 1957, Otto Eugen Zöller wrote "By the Candlelight", memories of Christmas before the Second World War.

Even then, crowds were on the move and bumped into each other to the cathedral crib and back to the Christmas market.

Trombones and Gloriosa "did such a bloody fuss in the Silent Night".

Between the texts, Johannes Schubert chirped on the zither like the house cricket in Dickens' Christmas story of the same name.

Most recently, it got cozy with "Silent Night", but the encore demanded by the audience cast deep shadows: the Harry Lime theme from the post-war film "The Third Man" was a reminder that even now not everyone can sing "O you happy".

Only Fontane can help: "Be cheerful: God will help." And the Volksbühne too, which should make this evening a tradition.