Die Kleine vom Varieté

“People will laugh, squeal, race”, the Berlin trade journal Film-Kurier predicted after the premiere of Die Kleine vom Varieté (The Little One from the Variety Show) on 4 September 1926. Ossi Oswalda, the first German flapper, plays a knife-throwing vaudeville artist who loves an unemployed dentist who in turn is to marry a girl from the province. The resulting confusion provides Ossi Oswalda with an opportunity for her famous outbursts of temper, for games of hide-and-seek in men’s clothes, comedy and anarchy. Nice girls wear monocles here, a jazz band provides quirky sounds, and everyone goes wild at some point. “A brisk pace, breathtaking suspense and nerve wrecking situations. (...) Knives flash, revolvers crack, it rains kisses and hails slaps,” was the verdict of the Berlin newspaper Tägliche Rundschau on 5 September 1926.

Die Kleine vom Varieté is accompanied by David Schwarz (piano) and Thomas Prestin (saxophone). David Schwarz is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who has also worked as a theatre musician and actor at Schauspiel Frankfurt, Schauspielhaus Graz and Theater Oberhausen. Thomas Prestin plays the saxophone and the clarinet, he has been a member of saxophone quartets and rock’n’roll bands and has performed in the USA, Mexico, Venezuela, China and Algeria. He is also active in theatre, most recently in Erfurt, Schwerin and Bamberg. He lives in Berlin.