★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. April Albert. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 27 Feb 2026
The whole David Hasselhoff concert at the Berlin Wall before it fell in 1989 has almost been erased from history. But the footage is there. A bizarre melange of pop culture and politics in which the Hoff offered his most disturbing, cringeworthy performance of a dying career.
April Albert maxes out this near forgotten moment of political cringe in Kapitalism is Your Friend.
Albert plays Franzi, an East Berliner who suffered a fall celebrating the wall’s demise, ending up in a 30 year coma. She wakes to a world in which promises of freedom and capitalism so eagerly sought during the days of the DDR, have arrived. How does she find it?
Franzi’s adoration of David Hasselhoff has reached religious level. There’s a little suitcase shrine to him. There’s also a massive double reflection photo of him adorning the wall of stage left. Franzi is Lycra clad, 80s pop loving and in amazement at the free modern world. She creates an aura of the sickly, icky commercialised 80s the shift in post DDR East Germany adopted world-wide. We recognise it, inwardly laugh, cringe at it, but Albert ensures by her performance of Franzi as innocent, critically unaware in the initial stages of the show so that’s as far as we take it.
The joy of the little “electronics” (mobile phones) that let you connect to everyone anytime is her greatest fascination. It’s the point the work starts to get beyond the idea that the end of history was reached when capitalism defeated the DDR and the wall fell.
This crazy East Berliner lives in two minds about life in the communist DDR and capitalism. Slowly but surely, reconciling the two becomes suddenly a lot harder than expected. Those electronics and being able to twit with “hashtags” suddenly get her thinking a little differently as she recalls how human beings surveilled people in the DDR. The electronics do it too, don’t they? What does being‘content’ mean? It’s freedom, isn’t it? That’s capitalism as friend, Ja?
Kapitalism is Your Friend mixes comedy and disturbing considerations brilliantly. It puts political realties smack bang in the middle of the distracting toys of 21st Century capitalism. Overwhelming aura of nostalgia the work entails is so awkward you’re forced to think again.
David O’Brien
When: 21 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
