Hamlet

"The time is out of joint" – an often-quoted line 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 people who can't keep up with them? And which times are we talking about? Yesterday's times or tomorrow's? What is really "rotten in the state" that Hamlet's mother and her new husband are trying to hold together while balancing reform, progress and bureaucracy? And why does Hamlet believe that he can get the current times back on course if he violently 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 strange and unsettling? Hamlet unites the personal tragedy of a man who believes he must correct the course of time with 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 on the self-destructive forces of a society that plays out the contradictions of a world order based on violence in itself. Ersan Mondtag – who participated as an artist in the German Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale in 2024 – is well-known for the strong visual imagery in his productions and often designs their stages himself.