The Hamlet machine

Play by Heiner Müller

»I was Hamlet. I stood on the shore and talked to the surf BLABLA, with the ruins of Europe behind me.« With these words Heiner Müller opens his play, in which personal experiences, historical events and Shakespeare's greatest procrastinator Hamlet stand side by side on an equal footing.

In Müller's play, Hamlet is no more than a messenger of his own thoughts; everything has already happened. For the young prince, overwhelmed by a modern, constantly changing world, action no longer seems possible at all. This Hamlet actor soberly recapitulates the most important key points of the drama. But he is not the only one to have his say - Hamlet's lover, Ophelia, also appears alongside him and the author himself seems to speak again and again, until Elektra has the floor at the end and the Shakespeare cosmos is completely abandoned.

Heiner Müller works with multiple overwritings in this text, laconically and disillusioned, he not only paints the picture of the great doubter Hamlet, but first and foremost that of an oversaturated society. Between everyday observations, thoughts on violence and the inescapable logic of killing and being killed, utopian images flash up again and again. They tell of a radical break with convention, of total refusal or revolutionary social upheaval.

Written in 1977, this text is still frighteningly topical today. Through a multitude of personal references by Müller and an examination of life in the GDR, the play traces the timeless longing for a better life and, through Hamlet, reflects the feeling of powerlessness in a sensitive and approachable way.

DIRECTOR Jan Meyer

STAGE Ralph Zeger

COSTUME Sabina Moncys