How to Die Laughing

How To Die Laughing is a play in seven acts. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are left defeated by the circumstances of the mysterious death of Dr Praetorius a celebrated professor killed in a car crash. The sudden appearance of Mr Shunderson, Praetorius' factotum, only serves to confuse them further. But when Shunderson begins to tell the unbelievable story of his master's demise, the fate of Praetorius gradually unfolds as the four months before his eventual death are retold in flashback. However not everything is as straightforward as it sometimes seems: for instance, why was the respected physician hauled in front of a Board of Ethics the day before he died? Could it have something to do with the treatment of his student Maria Violetta? Or does it go further back to the opening of his practice in Peepnest? And why is Shunderson so secretive about his own past?
Dr Job Praetorius was written in 1932, at a time when democracy was being challenged by extremists. But while the surface of the play is almost untouched by that turbulence, underneath lies a deep resentment of the unfolding political climate, and the controlling machinations of envy, greed, and stupidity. Curt Goetz (1888-1960) is a German theatrical institution, as a stage and film actor, a director, and a playwright. His plays echo the romanticism of Schiller and Goethe, the expressionism of Wedekind, the constructed wit of Oscar Wilde, and the natural drama of Ibsen. They are not sentimental but emotional, not intellectual but intelligent. Goetz wrote his plays "guided by the compulsion to create laughter". This compulsion proved well placed; no other writer's comedies have been as frequently incorporated into the repertoire of the German theatre in the last eighty years.

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