Hamlet

"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. Ersan Mondtag, who participated in the German Pavilion as an artist at the Venice Art Biennale in 2024, is well-known for the strong visual imagery in his productions and designs his stages himself.