Sydow Takes the Pulse of Modern Society

BY OLIVERA GLIGORIC-FÜRERWith poetry, charm and verbal artistry, cabaret artist René Sydow entertained the audience on the town hall park deck. He focused on the things that matter to him in the life of an emancipated citizen: society and politics.Friedrichsdorf. There is no shortage of cabaret artists "who talk about their penises or their girlfriends", says René Sydow. The only thing that surprises him is that the audience laughs anyway. But even for this the 35-year-old comedian had an answer: "It is the response to a shock", a kind of protective mechanism of the brain that keeps it from going haywire.The Sommerbrücken audience on the park deck by the town hall quickly grasped that Sydow is no man with an attention complex, not one who exposes himself and those around him to ridicule in order to harvest malicious laughter. A good 400 people let themselves be swept along by Sydow's programme "Gedanken! Los!".Sydow is more analyst and educator than mere observer. He has an opinion and does not keep it to himself. He criticises openly and at times takes aim at the audience's own habits. Yet they are ready to swallow the bitter pills — perhaps because the artist was right.For the most part the listeners were on the same wavelength as the cabaret artist: they rewarded his finely honed explanations with great applause. The word artist mastered the balancing act between know-it-all and entertainer with bravura: his descriptions came without a wagging finger, washed ashore instead on a gentle wave of poetry — without, of course, ever missing the mark.Sydow's intellect seemed to forbid him ugliness such as foul language; he sank his putt without bending a single blade of grass. With thinning hair and a smart grey suit, he could equally have passed for an up-and-coming young professor. Sydow is as clever as he is structured. He climbs onto his therapist's couch in front of the listener, he says, because he worries far too much about the world and about humankind itself.He was glad to share his knowledge of the planet's plight. He explained, for instance, what it means to live in an advanced world that has energy-saving lamps — produced in countries where large parts of the population do not even have electricity. People are too comfortable to form an opinion: "The effort required to separate lie from truth is too great."He railed against dumbing-down television programmes and pondered the IQ of so-called It-girls. He exposed hip management seminars as a rip-off and political correctness as a farce, behind whose terminology Germans in particular like to hide. Language changes by itself, he said, subject to a dynamic process, as he illustrated with the word "Neger". A word that today, rightly, must not be spoken — but rewriting children's books because of it? "It is not the words that are hurtful, but the thoughts behind them", Sydow concluded.Sydow is a gifted actor and word artist, a poet and cabaret performer who has won numerous awards: among them the "Stuttgarter Besen", the "St. Ingberter Pfanne" and the Kleinkunstpreis Baden-Württemberg. And he has already appeared on the satire show "Die Anstalt" (ZDF).