Serotonin

• Based on the novel Sérotonine by Michel Houellebecq
• Translated from the French by Stephan Kleiner
• Theatrical adaptation by Sebastian Hartmann

Hans Otto Theater Potsdam

Premiere: December 13, 2025

Florent-Claude Labrouste has maneuvered his life into a dead end. Marked by failed relationships, humiliated by impotence caused by antidepressants, weary of life, and full of contempt for himself and the world around him, he pulls up stakes. He takes a ruthless stock of his life—in part through the women in his life.

Michel Houellebecq’s novel Serotonin centers on a deeply frustrated, sad, and lamenting character. Sebastian Hartmann takes a resolute and radical approach to this material: nothing distracts from the great storytelling of Guido Lambrecht, who, in an impressive solo performance, lends voice and body to a man in disarray through his nuanced, precise, and understated acting. Situated somewhere between installation, performance, and theater, Serotonin is a fascinatingly challenging road movie of stagnation and an invitation to surrender to the action on stage.

Jury Statement

“Sebastian Hartmann has never before presented such a reduced and purist production. His stage adaptation of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Serotonin is a masterpiece of theatrical minimalism: it requires nothing more than a white box containing only a white wooden bench, a single spotlight, and, of course, Guido Lambrecht. For a good five hours, Lambrecht remains in this space, whose whiteness seems to erase everything, and lays bare the botched life of Houellebecq’s first-person narrator, Florent-Claude Labrouste. This unflinching confession of a failed man is repeatedly interrupted by a second, German-German life story that expands upon and comments on Labrouste’s toxic view of the world. Lambrecht’s restrained yet precise performance is a minor theatrical sensation. It allows one to peer deep into the abyss of a man’s soul and thus penetrate to the core of the currently virulent anti-modern thinking.”

– Sascha Westphal for the Theatertreffen jury

Artistic Team

• Sebastian Hartmann – Direction and Set Design
• Lothar Baumgarte – Lighting
• Adriana Peretzki – Costumes
• Christopher Hanf – Dramaturgy

Cast

• Guido Lambrecht

IN GERMAN