Hamlet
after William Shakespeare
The stage as an attic: Hamlet’s mother and his hated uncle marry shortly after the death of Hamlet’s father. Hamlet takes himself up into the attic during the wedding ceremony and creates his own reality. Hamlet expresses his ideas and feelings through large puppets, They represent the people around him: his uncle Claudius, his mother Gertrude, chamberlain Claudius, his beloved Ophelia, her brother Laertes and Hamlet’s dead father. The characters increasingly develop a dynamic of their own during the piece, and gradually seize control of Hamlet’s psyche. They finally allow him to intervene into reality.
The direction team Katja Hensel and Christiane Pohle have converted »Hamlet« for the medium of puppet theatre in a really perfect manner and reveal Hamlet’s innermost soul. His gradual madness is demonstrated especially forcefully by means of the puppet medium. Marc Schnittger creates an immensely authentic atmosphere with his almost man-sized and convincingly human-looking puppets made of leather, horsehair and glass – a play filled with drama, but not lacking in humour.
