Out of Order

Comedy by Ray Cooney
Directed by Nils Engelhardt

A state affair hanging by a thread: when the truth goes "Out of Order"

What does an upstanding government minister do when a planned romantic escapade with the opposition's secretary comes to a sudden - and very lifeless - end? For Richard Hill, a luxury suite at the Westminster Hotel becomes the setting for a nightmare that threatens to drag both his political career and his private life into the abyss. Instead of a thrilling tryst, the mismatched pair are greeted by a rather inconvenient surprise: a would-be burglar is stuck, motionless, in the suite's broken sliding window. Calling the police is out of the question - the secretary's presence would trigger a scandal no government could survive.

In this moral dead end, Richard's loyal but hopelessly out-of-his-depth secretary George West turns out to be the last - if least reliable - lifeboat. George is promptly appointed crisis manager and must take on roles for which he has neither the talent nor the nerves. What follows is a masterfully engineered escalation: to cover up the corpse - who turns out to be surprisingly mobile - and keep the affair under wraps, a web of lies is spun so intricate that the protagonists soon lose track of it themselves.

Martin Betz as Richard Hill (government minister)
Eckart Northoff as the hotel manager
Joachim Kümmerlehn as the hotel waiter
Antje Stark as Jane Cooper
Nils Engelhardt as the body
Sven Mallon as George West (Richard Hill's secretary)
Luca Riegler as Ronnie Cooper (Jane Cooper's husband)
Jasmin El-Salib as Pamela Hill (Richard Hill's wife)
Britta Lewerenz as Nurse Foster