Radio plays

"Udo the Steely"

Author: Joseph A. Gleich (Austria 1772)
Genre: Radio play
Production: RIAS 1993
Director: Götz Naleppa
Editing: Theodor Weißenborn
Music: Helge Jörns
Length: 360 min./ 14 episodes
Sound and technology: Lutz Pahl

Contributors:
Narrator: Günter Westphal
Udo: Sylvester Groth
Kunibert: Arno Wyzniewski
Johanne: Dagmar Sitte
Lambertine: Joana Schümer
Emperor: Werner Rehm
Servant: Dieter Kursawe
Ebbo: Gunter Schoß
Emmerich: Michael Maertens
Hermit: Eric Vaessen
Freigraf: Klaus Piontek
George: Otto Sander
Joana Schürmer
Servant: Dieter Kursawe
1st hooded man: Frank Hessenland
2nd hooded man: Eric Vaessen
Lady of the castle: Viola Sauer
Lord of the castle: Thomas Schendel
Burgvogt: Werner Rehm
Choir: Frank Hessenland, Jörg Menke-Peitzmeyer, Eric Vaessen, Dieter Kursawe
Midget: Michael Walke

Content:
The future Viennese popular writer Joseph Alois Gleich was only 29 years old when he wrote the first of his hundred volumes of chivalric novels, mostly published under the pseudonym Ludwig Dellarosa. As Meyer's Konversationslexikon from 1895 notes, he 'for a long time met the taste of the lower public'. Later, one searches in vain for the author's name. He had to give way to the fame of his son-in-law Ferdinand Raimund. Theodor Weißenborn, prolific author of radio plays, tracked down the old knightly and gruesome stuff, so he can certainly be considered the inventor of 'Udo-mania'. May the willing listener follow the trials and tribulations of Udo and his sweetheart, Maid Johanne, on stony paths through male quarrels and female infidelity, up and up through the Harz bushes (why not through the Vienna Woods?), through vain delusion and femme court. He only suffers wounds that would probably lead to his demise, were it not for the fact that, in addition to Johannen, there is another lady, the French Lambertine ... It is she who leads Udo through the Harz, 'heavenwards' (to use the words of another great Viennese folk poet), towards Drudenstein, the home of his forefathers, the place of future happiness.

Remarks: Radio play of the month


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