Hamlet:

William Shakespeare
Fri 09 05
Sat 10 05
Großes Haus

German version by Angela Schanelec & Jürgen Gosch
14+
Duration: approx. 2 hours 45 mins, including interval
Language: German

To be or not to be: Shakespeare’s great classic about legacy and responsibility in Karin Henkel’s Burgtheater production.

Prince Hamlet feels lost and adrift as he struggles with the grief of his father’s mysterious passing. Just two months after his father’s death, his mother has remarried – to his uncle Claudius. When the ghost of his father appears, revealing that he was poisoned by his own brother and demanding vengeance, Hamlet becomes ensnared in a web of madness and contradiction, deception and betrayal, role-playing and intrigue. In her production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Karin Henkel repeatedly resurrects ghosts of the past, blurring the lines between appearance and reality in a relentless game of illusion. Henkel began her theatre career in the 1990s at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and is now one of the most celebrated directors in the German-speaking world. She has directed productions at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Residenztheater Munich, and the Salzburg Festival. Her production at Vienna’s Burgtheater brings together a remarkable ensemble for Shakespeare’s legendary classic… with not just one Hamlet!

A production by the Burgtheater Vienna

Direction: Karin Henkel
Stage Design: Katrin Brack
Costume Design: Teresa Vergho
Chorus Master: Alexander Weise
Lighting Design: Michael Hofer
Dramaturgy: Thomas Jonigk/Christina Schlögl
Performance: Alexander Angeletta/Benny Claessens/Katharina Lorenz/Michael Maertens/Marie-Luise Stockinger/Kate Strong/Tim Werths
Composition & Live Music: Thomas Kürstner/Sebastian Vogel