Liliom

Liliom is a well-known caller at the town's fairground and very familiar with the machinery of illusions for the people. Working at the carrousel, he meets Julie, a maidservant – and a fateful love-story begins. To follow their longing for a life without exploitation, they both immediately risk their jobs. But as an umemployed man, Liliom increasingly sees his social status as humiliating. He has no words for his shame; instead he lashes out and his blows hit Julie. When she becomes pregnant, their economic deprivation increases and Liliom allows a friend to persuade him to commit robbery. The attempt fails and Liliom stabs himself to death to escape humiliation and punishment. But a tribunal awaits him in the beyond, allowing him a second chance on earth after 16 years of purgatory. Can people really change?

The multiple award-winning German-Hungarian author TERÉZIA MORA has created a new translation of the most famous play by the Hungarian dramatist Ferenc Molnár, written in 1909. Director CHRISTINA TSCHARYISKI focusses on a society where people are at the mercy of the violent carrousel of social inequality like targets in a shooting gallery – and yet they reproduce this cycle.