Florian von Manteuffel

Oedipus, the lead candidate of a new political movement, is as good as assured of election victory. But why are the circumstances of his predecessor’s fatal road traffic accident classified? And what is the fake news regarding his origins about? Oedipus starts to investigate – despite all the warnings. As in his updating of Schnitzler’s «The Doctor», Robert Icke has radically translated a theatre classic into the present. Icke’s «Oedipus» looks behind the myth and is both a family tragedy and a political thriller.

Anna Gmeyner’s «Automatenbüfett» satirises all the «important» people of a small town and the larger world in microcosm. This elite group of men gathers daily in Mrs Adam’s automated buffet, a «restaurant» where food and drink may only be available at the push of a button, but one can nevertheless argue splendidly about politics. However, when the idea of factory farming fish is proposed, all these opponents suddenly start pulling in the same direction.

After a quarter of a century, Brandner Kaspar returns to the Residenztheater – and how! Based on Franz von Kobell's dialect story, Franz Xaver Kroetz tells the story of the Bavarian stubborn man who refuses to bow even to Death himself, the Boanlkramer, in a very honest and touching way, yet completely unsentimental and with a great deal of humour. Munich-based film, theatre and opera director Philipp Stölzl brings the «Gschichtn vom Brandner Kaspar» to the stage as a «big picture book, because the play is, of course, a fairy tale».

The Australian writer and director Simon Stone took Chekhov’s famous play as the starting point for his rewriting – voted «Play of the Year 2017» in «Theater heute» magazine – that combines rapid fire dialogue, subtle character studies and the ambivalence that arises from them while locating the play thematically in the here and now.

Ishmael signs on to the «Pequod», an old whaler. However, it soon becomes clear that the aim of the voyage is not just to exploit the world's oceans and their giant marine mammals, but Captain Ahab's personal vendetta. Melville's «Moby Dick» - brought to the stage by Stefan Pucher - is both an adventurous sailor's yarn and a reflection on the fatal art of seduction of a demagogue.

In Stephan Kimmig's production, the boundaries between Shakespeare's fairy world and the harsh reality of the big city become blurred. Fuelled by Puck's magic, a summer night unfolds in which soon no one knows where love ends and obsession begins.

Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot, who they neither know who he is nor what they actually want from him. With his ambiguous work about waiting and the passing of time, which has been interpreted in all directions, Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett created one of the classics of modernism, which in-house director Claudia Bauer reinterprets.