Hansel and Gretel | The Hare and the Hedgehog

Hansel and Gretel:

The daily barrage of shocking reports on abandonment and abuse provokes outrage, and, disgusted, we flick through to the stock market or the sports pages. Yet when Hansel and Gretel sneak into our cottage on the quiet, they have long since been dead: decayed, frozen to death, consumed. Introspective and shy, the little corpses confess to us what befell them. And somehow these little ghosts manage to drag the audience into their nameless horror: we ourselves become the child, standing godlessly in the cold forest night, left alone, lost … Mummy? Daddy? Can’t anyone hear us? Is there no help to be found anywhere? No? No, only the wicked witch hears our cries, and everything, everything keeps getting worse: That’s no lovely fairy tale! Because it isn’t a fairy tale.

The Hare and the Hedgehog

The classic par excellence, the original Grimm tale. This is how the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm taught us to turn their fairy tales of lies into reality through play: by means of two actors, a stage the size of a beer mat, and a great love of literal detail. The original text is as sacred as the Bible and to be taken as seriously as a Shakespearean epic. What’s written there is to be regarded as strict stage directions, even – and especially – when the hare races the hedgehog for a full 73 laps. Who plays the hedgehog woman? And how, pray tell, does one credibly fall for the same cheap trick 73 times? Well, quite simply: with the help of the audience and with the greatest of pleasure – yes, we promise: Grimm-style on the Fairy-Tale Hill!

• For adults only – admission from 14 years of age