“Of Mice and Men” in Aachen

It’s good to be home at the Back Road Café, after a month traveling in the UK, Germany, Belgium and France.  I went to a lot of cool European cafes, but nothing beats the fine nourishment and great company of the good folks at BRC.

Aachen, GermanyEarly morning in Aachen, Germany, I was sitting at a bakery as rich in color and aroma as the town’s imperial heritage as Charlemagne’s ancient capitol.  Surrounded by happy German speakers, I only remembered one phrase from my one class in college, “Das bier ist gut hier in Munchen.” I had vaguely understood the 7AM mass in Charlemagne’s 9^th century Kaiserdom (Imperial Cathedral) from the familiar rhythms of worship, but I just wordlessly pointed when I bought my yummy bakery treats.  Reading my English guidebook I heard a man at the next table say to his friend, “Aachen, braachen, schnitzel, blitzen, neibuhr, lieber….Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men.”

I just blurted out, “Steinbeck!  I live in Monterey, California, Steinbeck’s town.”  Maybe I was so homesick, or just so relieved to understand something, that I asked the guy if he was reading Steinbeck’s great American Depression novella.  No, he said, in perfect English (Americans traveling in Europe are so pathetically mono-lingual, although mon Francais ce n’est pas mal).  Der Aachen Herr had just gotten back from New York City, where he had seen the poignant drama adaptation Steinbeck made, this year starring James Franco and Chris O’Dowd.  What did you think, I asked?  Oh, I loved it, he said, but my favorite show was Bullets Over Broadway.  Also Aladdin.  Oh, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, that was fantastic.  You saw four Broadway shows?  Ten shows in six days, he said proudly. 

I knew he didn’t have to leave Aachen to find theater since I had walked from the Bahnhoff to the Dom along Theatrestrasse, but I agreed with mein neue freundin that the lights are bright on Broadway. My homesickness was tempered by a little pride that this man had had a happy American theatre experience.  I remembered that it was early June and I would be missing the annual June Tony Awards on TV, the Oscars of theater, the crowning of NY’s theatrical stars.  Always an entertaining show, with a cool actor host, a witty opening monologue, classy acceptance speeches from articulate actors, scenes from the nominated plays, and some poignant tributes to drama history.  So when I got home I went to You Tube to watch selections from the 2014 American Theater Wing Tony awards I had missed while overseas.

Check it out if it’s available where you live.  In recent years the awards show only recreates scenes from the nominated musicals, not the dramas, which is too bad.  So I couldn’t see Franco trying to protect the gentle giant Lennie character played by O’Dowd from hurting himself and others, in yet another instance of how the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, thank you Robert Burns.  But I did see a clip of Neil Patrick Harris in a fantastic performance as Hedwig, the transgendered East German drag queen.  And a great song and tapdance routine of “Aint Nobody’s Business if I Do” from Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway.

Last time I was in New York I went to the play “Jersey Boys,” the bittersweet musical about the 60’s group The Four Seasons, like myself a product of the Garden State.  Clint Eastwood has just made it into a movie.  I might go see it, but I think I’d rather just treasure the poignant memory of the stage production, sitting in the old ornate theatre with hundreds of other Jersey girls, laughing and crying and singing our adolescence.  “My eyes adored you.”  There is something about the shared live play that a movie can’t touch.

Like my Aachen friend who traveled 3000 miles to see ten New York shows in less than a week, I have many times experienced the power and presence that comes from live theatre.  And like my surprise rapport with him across barriers of culture and language, a stage play can tell a story that at first seems impossibly foreign and unintelligible.  But sitting there you realize, no, this speaks directly to me.  I live there too.  Lennie and I aren’t so different; I have hurt people unintentionally, lost dreams, had plans go astray. 

I sit in the dark and understand something, touched and moved and inspired.  I sit in the German bakery and understand a little, touched and moved and inspired.

Grateful always for the surprise encounters of travel and how small our world really is.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter