Hamlet

Shakespeare's most famous play is a family drama, revenge tragedy with gothic elements and a psychological study in one. Apparently haunted by his father's ghost, Hamlet believes he must not only avenge his father's alleged murder, but also set right everything else that is wrong in the world. Who wouldn't be overwhelmed by such a task? In a world that teaches violence and lies as its preferred method, what decisions are in Hamlet's hands?

"The time is out of joint" – a sentence often quoted from Hamlet that probably resonates strongly with many of us at the moment. But what if it isn't the times that have gone mad, but rather that some people just can't orientate themselves in them anymore? And which times are we talking about? What really is "rotten in the state" that Hamlet's mother has established with her new husband, trying to balance reform, progress and bureaucracy? And why does Hamlet believe that he can get the current times back on course if he avenges his dead father, the old patriarch? In what kind of times does the past return as undead history? And what does that do with sons like Hamlet, who find both their fathers' time and the present unsettling? "Hamlet" unites the personal tragedy of a man who believes he has to correct the course of time and a family drama set during a transition between epochs plagued by crisis.

Director Ersan Mondtag and writer Wilke Weermann place the focus of their version of Shakespeare's probably most famous play on the self-destructive forces of its main character, who embodies the contradictions of a world order based on violence.