Don Quixote (Don Quijote)
by Jakob Nolte based on Miguel de Cervantes
First premiere of the version by Jakob Nolte
In the translation by Susanne Lange
After reading countless knightly novels, an impoverished Junker appoints himself Don Quixote of La Mancha and gives himself the honourable task of defending his fellow men against evil and reviving a new Golden age. He finds a loyal squire in the seemingly naive Sancho Panza and takes him on a journey to impress a simple farm girl alias Dulcinea of Toboso. Their heroic deeds usually end in brutal defeats, which is why Don Quixote soon receives the epithet The Knight from the sad figure. And even with Sancho Panza's dream, who sees himself as the future ruler of an island country, it doesn't really want to become anything. But their imagination remains undefeated: they fail, get up again and continue to fight against windmills.
Miguel de Cervantes is in prison after an eventful life when he begins to write the first part of a novel that marks the dawn of literary modernism in 1605. It is a cover letter against the shackles of reality, because with Don Quixote he invents an excessively creative fantasist, who only acquires identity through his much more pragmatic playmate Sancho Panza. By creating their own reality through their thoughts, they are themselves the world and can't be with each other, but also not without each other. In no time at all, the two of them become famous, which they thematize in the second part themselves, which appeared ten years later. To this day the mad couple has icon status and in this first performance of Jakob Nolte's version they shoulder their (imagined) adventures all by themselves.
In the translation by Susanne Lange
After reading countless knightly novels, an impoverished Junker appoints himself Don Quixote of La Mancha and gives himself the honourable task of defending his fellow men against evil and reviving a new Golden age. He finds a loyal squire in the seemingly naive Sancho Panza and takes him on a journey to impress a simple farm girl alias Dulcinea of Toboso. Their heroic deeds usually end in brutal defeats, which is why Don Quixote soon receives the epithet The Knight from the sad figure. And even with Sancho Panza's dream, who sees himself as the future ruler of an island country, it doesn't really want to become anything. But their imagination remains undefeated: they fail, get up again and continue to fight against windmills.
Miguel de Cervantes is in prison after an eventful life when he begins to write the first part of a novel that marks the dawn of literary modernism in 1605. It is a cover letter against the shackles of reality, because with Don Quixote he invents an excessively creative fantasist, who only acquires identity through his much more pragmatic playmate Sancho Panza. By creating their own reality through their thoughts, they are themselves the world and can't be with each other, but also not without each other. In no time at all, the two of them become famous, which they thematize in the second part themselves, which appeared ten years later. To this day the mad couple has icon status and in this first performance of Jakob Nolte's version they shoulder their (imagined) adventures all by themselves.
Director Jan Bosse
Set Stéphane Laimé
Costumes Kathrin Plath
Music Arno Kraehahn
Lighting Robert Grauel
Dramaturgy David Heiligers
Berlin premiere
12. Oktober 2019
Deutsches Theater
Co-production with Bregenzer Festspiele
Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes, 1 intermission
12. Oktober 2019
Deutsches Theater
Co-production with Bregenzer Festspiele
Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes, 1 intermission
Ulrich MatthesDon Quixote
Wolfram KochSancho Panza
Don Quixote
Sancho Panza
What's on
With English surtitles
Invited to the 48th Mülheimer Theatertage
Specification of the Person (Angabe der Person)
Director: Jossi Wieler
Deutsches Theater
19.00 - 21.20
STAY UNITED #2 – Cooperation with the Hotel Continental
Women at war
Reading with DT ensemble members Natali Seelig and Julia Windischbauer and Ukrainian artists Sofiia Kroshka, Anna Mrachkovska and musician Axxi Oma
Saal
19.30
With English surtitles
Director: Daniela Löffner
Kammerspiele
19.30 - 21.45
The synergy between Matthes and Koch is possibly the best I've witnessed between actors on a German stage. Whether in moments of incredulity (Sancho warning Quixote against charging the windmills) or argument (a witty late-evening debate about who the book’s real protagonist is), their relationship is thoroughly codependent.
But in the right artistic hands, even the unruliest and most cumbersome of narratives can be converted into gripping, involving theater.
[...]
It’s easy to wonder, at times, whether these characters are meant to be Cervantes’s iconic figures or just two homeless crazies playing make believe. This is, of course, just another way of construing the novel’s themes of imagination and madness. Either way, Matthes and Koch cut these outsize roles down to size.
[...]
Ulrich Matthes, a longtime ensemble member (best known internationally for having played Goebbels in the film "Downfall"), is a rugged and restless Quixote, both cruel and unexpectedly tender toward his companion. Wolfram Koch makes for an unusually assertive, though still gruff and uncouth, Sancho Panza. Jan Bosse’s production of "Quixote", [...] makes a radical yet impressively efficient reduction of the lengthy tome. Jakob Nolte, a young German playwright, turns the sprawling picaresque into a two-man show for the title knight and his loyal squire, Sancho Panza.
The synergy between Matthes and Koch is possibly the best I've witnessed between actors on a German stage. Whether in moments of incredulity (Sancho warning Quixote against charging the windmills) or argument (a witty late-evening debate about who the book’s real protagonist is), their relationship is thoroughly codependent.
But in the right artistic hands, even the unruliest and most cumbersome of narratives can be converted into gripping, involving theater.
[...]
It’s easy to wonder, at times, whether these characters are meant to be Cervantes’s iconic figures or just two homeless crazies playing make believe. This is, of course, just another way of construing the novel’s themes of imagination and madness. Either way, Matthes and Koch cut these outsize roles down to size.
[...]
Ulrich Matthes, a longtime ensemble member (best known internationally for having played Goebbels in the film "Downfall"), is a rugged and restless Quixote, both cruel and unexpectedly tender toward his companion. Wolfram Koch makes for an unusually assertive, though still gruff and uncouth, Sancho Panza.