The bitter tears of Petra von Kant

Press, 18 May 1988, Page 22

The bitter tears of Petra von Kant

Free Theatre is presenting a German play this week and next at the Rolleston Avenue theatre in the Arts Centre. It is Fassbinder’s “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.” The season, which opened yesterday, will continue until May 28. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the famous German filmmaker, was also a theatre director and playwright. He wrote “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” as a play which he later made into a film. Petra von Kant is a fashion designer who wants to redesign her life

on aesthetic principles. As her experience with marriage and the male world is ugly and devastating she turns to lesbian love only to find that beauty and love have to be paid for as much as success and financial independence. “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” moves from soap opera and melodrama to radical criticism of patriarchal society and the male principle, says its director Peter Falkenberg. The play is caught in a mixture of kitsch and art, as Petra is caught between

the desire for love and beauty and the exploitation of her sisters. The production sets the play in New Zealand, New Zealand that is more a tatty capitalist dream than reality, Falkenberg says. Petra von Kant’s dresses will be modelled in a fashion show and are on sale in the interval and at the end of the play. This is the first production as a co-operation between the Free Theatre and the newly established University Drama Programme.