Sarah and Alfred - a tragic “love” story?
I know this will get long, but please, I beg you, read the whole thing. Something that I keep seeing is people talking about how Sarah doesn’t care about Alfred, never liked him and could never like him or how actresses can decide how to play the part and I feel like we need to look at the libretto a little bit closer. Or, to be more accurate, for once think of a song that people seem to forget about.
I know that Draußen ist Freiheit is basically the “big” Alfred and Sarah song. It makes sense, it’s only the two of them, it’s a beautiful song etc. A song that happens quite a bit before that, though, and that is incredibly important to the show, is Nie geseh’n, and people tend to forget about that song.
I’m not going to translate the entire song and put the lyrics in here, but let’s talk about the general meaning for a moment: Alfred and Sarah are both singing about how nice and lovely the other is, how they have never seen someone like that. “Since we met, everything I do makes sense”. “Instead of sleeping, I’m wondering if you can guess what I am dreaming”. “Since we met, I only feel you”. “If I ever fall in love then I will surely love someone just like you, or I will never rest”.
Sounds a lot like a crush, doesn’t it? The important thing here is: Sarah is all on her own. She isn’t talking to anyone else, not her mother, not a friend, not Alfred directly. She is talking to herself, which means that everything she says is meant exactly the way she says it. One doesn’t say things they don’t mean when they’re talking to themselves.
I’m not saying that her crush is as strong as Alfred’s is; it is obviously possible that Sarah is so excited about someone being there that she believes her feelings are stronger than they actually are. But that doesn’t change anything about the fact that she does indeed like him and that the crush is there.
That changes later in the show, obviously, and most of what we see of her is Sarah wanting to get away from Alfred. I get that since we mainly see her wanting to get away from him, people ignore these three minutes in which she’s crushing on him, but hear me out, yes?
In Du bist wirklich sehr nett, Sarah uses Alfred to get the bathroom. She really wants that bath. She likes bathing. The thing is: Alfred just happens to be there. Except from her parents, who forbade her to use the bathroom, it could have been literally anyone. Sarah didn’t know it would be Alfred using the bathroom. She only heard someone in there and decided to take a chance. It could have been Magda. Hells, it could have been Abronsius. The only reason why it’s Alfred is because we need them to actually talk to each other so Alfred’s love for her makes sense. Sarah didn’t use Alfred because it’s him, but because he was the one who was there.
Then we have Draußen ist Freiheit. What happens here is actually incredibly important. Sarah has never felt good at home, that’s obvious. She’s been locked in her room for most likely years, and now her father even hit her after using the bathroom. That’s abuse. Sarah is in the situation of feeling so horrible at home that she simply cannot stay there anymore, and she wants to run with the first person who offers her a place to go to because anywhere is better than home. “I can’t handle it anymore”.“In there, I’d suffocate”. She doesn’t say that to be dramatic. She truly wants and needs freedom, because she’s in a toxic home.
The problem? Alfred doesn’t get that. He is nothing but kind and he means well, I’m definitely not denying that, but he doesn’t understand that Sarah’s home is such a horrible place that she needs to leave. Instead of listening to her and trying to find a better solution, he asks her to stay home.
Think of it as if it was you: You’re telling someone you trust that your parents abuse you, that staying at home is no option at all. But instead of trying to help you, the person insists on you staying with your family. That’s not what you want to hear, and, more importantly, it implies that this abuse is okay. If Alfred had offered to take her away, she most likely would have agreed. It’s not that she desperately wants to go to Dark Vampire Dude™; she wants to be free, to get away from her parents. Krolock is just the only option she has, and so she goes for it.
The next time they meet is in the bathroom in act two. At this point, Krolock has been nothing but kind to Sarah. It doesn’t matter if he means that or if he’s just acting in order to get an easy meal. The point is: Sarah is being treated with respect for the first time in her entire life. She can bathe, she actually gets nice clothes etc. And then Alfred walks by and tells her to leave all of that behind.
Remember Harry Potter who was happy to stay at Hogwarts during the holidays because it meant he didn’t have to see the Dursleys? Yeah. Now imagine forcing him back there during the Christmas holidays. Literally the same.
It’s cruel to ask someone to go back to a place where they only get hurt. Sarah sends him away, not because she dislikes Alfred, but because he’s asking something of her that she could never agree to. He’s asking her to go to a place where she will be locked in again, where her father will hit her again for running away (since Sarah doesn’t know Chagal has been turned).
And those aren’t interpretations, it’s all literally in the libretto. Sarah and Alfred could have worked out, in some way. The tragic thing about them is that they actually care about each other (Nie geseh’n, friends. That song is a thing and yes, you can definitely take it literally because nothing else would make sense); they just don’t understand each other.
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