Star parade

Meyerhoff & Kammerer: dream duo at the Burg

An eagerly awaited highlight celebrates its premiere at Vienna's Burgtheater on March 1: In Ayad Akhtar's "The McNeal Case", audience favorite Joachim Meyerhoff and Hollywood export Felix Kammerer ("Nothing New in the West") are on stage as father and son.

A particularly appealing pairing awaits at the Burgtheater when the German-language premiere of Ayad Akhtar's "The McNeal Case" is staged on March 1. On the one hand, Joachim Meyerhoff will be celebrating his long-awaited Burg comeback, and Burg director Stefan Bachmann has managed to sign up 29-year-old Felix Kammerer, who played the lead role in the 2023 war drama "Nothing New in the West", which won four Oscars, and has since shuttled between Vienna and Hollywood.

Meyerhoff now plays an eccentric writer at the Burg. In his new book, he has written about his son's private experiences without his consent. The latter is now threatening to publicly destroy his father's career.

The Burg is a kind of second home for Joachim Meyerhoff, 57: Klaus Bachler brought him to the Burgtheater in 2005, where he played his way into the hearts of the audience from the very first moment. Meyerhoff achieved something that most of his fellow actors dream of. He became an audience favorite. A household name since Thomas Bernhard's "Holzfällen" at the latest, in any case a declaration of love. His three-hour one-man show at the Akademietheater in 2017 in Thomas Melle's "Die Welt im Rücken", which is firmly in the top 3 in the life of a loyal Burg subscriber, was memorable. Staged by Jan Bosse, with whom Meyerhoff has a long-standing and extremely successful collaboration - including when the German theater director turned the auditorium of the Burgtheater into an island and had Meyerhoff gambol around in it as Robinson and dismantle the interior. He later described the 15 years at the Burg as his best years - which came to an abrupt end with a stroke in December 2018, a new Burg director and the associated return to Germany to the Schaubühne Berlin.

A particularly difficult time lies behind him, which, like all of his life realities, was processed in autobiographical novels. The cult readings, as well as his current book "Man kann auch in die Höhe fallen", always ensure sold-out stages, most recently at the Landestheater Niederösterreich.

Award-winning: Felix Kammerer played the leading role of Paul Bäumer in the film "Im Westen nichts Neues", which won four Oscars.(Bild: Netflix)

Felix Kammerer is on his way to Hollywood
The 29-year-old Viennese Felix Kammerer, whom Martin Kušej brought to the Burgtheater in 2019/20, where he made his debut as the Duke of Medina-Sidonia in "Don Karlos", is well on his way to becoming an audience favorite. The son of the two opera singers Angelika Kirchschlager and Hans Peter Kammerer has a dream career. Already showered with awards (including the Nestroy and German Film Awards), his quadruple Oscar win in 2023 for the war drama "Nothing New in the West", in which he played the lead role of soldier Paul Bäumer, was the crowning glory: the door to Hollywood is open. He is shooting a new version of "Frankenstein" for Netflix under the direction of Guillermo del Toro alongside fellow countryman and Oscar winner Christoph Waltz, in Daniel Brühl's tennis drama "Break" he takes on the leading role of "tennis baron" Gottfried von Cramm - and on April 3, the survival thriller "Eden" will be released in cinemas, where he plays alongside Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby.

He can still be seen on stage in Vienna - but Kammerer's desire to film is fully ignited, he is keeping his future open and said in an interview regarding Burg's commitment: "You want to be loyal, but you don't want to stand still either!"