NOCH EINMAL VERLIEBT (The Last Romance)

The widower Ralph meets Carol in the park and finds her simply enchanting. Despite Ralph's blunt, somewhat grumpy manner, Carol is not averse either. Ralph's sister Rose, who keeps house for him, watches the "young love" with suspicion.

A love story – quite plain, simple, honest and wonderful. The protagonists' encounters sparkle with charm and the whole range of emotions of those newly in love – closeness and rejection, eroticism and distance. But as in every good story, there are question marks hanging like a sword of Damocles over the budding romance.

A lesson about life, wonderfully simple and plausibly spun. That the three actors – two women and one man – are around 70 is not only no obstacle to love, but lends the play a tremendous depth.

Joe DiPietro, born in 1961, has been a successful writer of comedies and musicals in the USA for many years and has won numerous awards for his stage plays.
Joe DiPietro's "The last Romance" premiered on 4 September 2008 at the New Theatre, Overland Park, Kansas. The German-language premiere, under the title "Ralph und Carol – Noch einmal verliebt", took place on 27 January 2011 at the Kammerspiele of the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna.

PRESS
TIROLER TAGESZEITUNG (14 July 2015)

ROMANCE IN THE AUTUMN OF LIFE
Tender spring feelings in high summer: opera lover Ralph (Günter Gräfenberg) is widowed, has been retired for a good twenty years – and is rather bored by the daily routine meticulously scheduled by his sister Rose (Susanne Schartner). At a dog park, the dogless stroller notices Carol (Eleonore Bürcher). Besides an exceptionally unsightly Chihuahua, she offers that stylish, worldly grandeur which awakens in Ralph's long-buried zest for life an openly pursued appetite for romance. Hesitantly, Carol responds to the advances of the reblossomed charmer: a teenage romance in the autumn of life.

Rose – the sour-faced voice of reason – is beside herself, but there is no shaking the resolve of the new lovers: the hope of escaping the loneliness of old age is too great, the prospect of belatedly fulfilling the missed opportunities of a working life full of hardship too tempting.

Love and death are the great themes of literary history – and love in the face of approaching death has become an increasingly significant topos of popular entertainment as life expectancy rises. Films, novels and stage adaptations of it are legion. US author Joe DiPietro may wring little that is original from this decidedly sombre subject, but he does produce the touching, light-footed boulevard comedy "Noch einmal verliebt", which, directed by Katharina Welser, has been showing at Innsbruck's Kellertheater since last weekend.

In Helfried Lauckner's understated, salmon-coloured set, "Noch einmal verliebt" works above all as wonderful acting: Günter Gräfenberg reels, with small gestures and a twinkle in his eye, between newly-in-love high spirits and the sobering wisdom of age; Eleonore Bürcher veils vulnerability behind a neat appearance and reveals in small doses those details that become unavoidable as the dramaturgically necessary obstacle to love. And Susanne Schartner convinces too: bitterness behind a stern dragon-of-the-house mask.

Accompanied by bel canto favourites, "Noch einmal verliebt" occasionally soars to melodramatic heights, yet, thanks to the committed ensemble, never loses its footing. (jole)