The storm

New Globe Theater

An island in the middle of nowhere.

Now Prospero's island. He was once the rightful Duke of Milan, but was overthrown by his brother because he was more concerned with magic, art and science than with his state. So he and his daughter Miranda were cast adrift on the high seas and washed up on the shores of this unknown island, took possession of it and rose to power once again - also with the help of his magic.

But the island is not uninhabited!

Caliban, a wild, untamed creature somewhere between aborigine and monster, is the real master of the island. He is disempowered and subjugated by Prospero and henceforth serves him as a slave. And Ariel, a spirit of the air, once banished into a tree by Caliban's witch mother, is freed by Prospero and is now indebted to him out of gratitude. And yet all he longs for is his freedom.

Everything could be good.

If it weren't for Prospero's thirst for revenge! When a ship with all his enemies on board appears on the horizon, he has Ariel whip up a storm that leaves his enemies stranded on his island. But then something unexpected happens: Prospero arranges for his daughter to marry the shipwrecked king's son Ferdinand - and forgives his adversaries! He even releases Ariel from his service into the freedom of the skies. Only Caliban remains enslaved and unredeemed in this romance-like ending.

As far as we know, but...

In 2007, Joachim Lux (dramaturge, director and, since 2009, artistic director at the Thalia Theater Hamburg), under the direction of Barbara Frey (long-time artistic director at the Schauspielhaus Zürich), achieved an extraordinary coup at the Burgtheater Wien / Akademietheater with an ingenious and audience-acclaimed adaptation of Shakespeare's THE STORM, which brought the theater 10 years of sold-out and acclaimed performances! Because here the play focuses entirely on three characters: Prospero, Caliban and Ariel!

Prospero forces the two dissimilar, essential servants to tell his story and that of his opponents over and over again. Prospero thus also becomes the author and director of his own past, his life and his future. In the process, the power relations and alliances shift in surprisingly comical and equally dangerous ways, constantly creating new perspectives. What is a game, what is reality?

With this production, the NEUE GLOBE THEATER returns to its roots, the Elizabethan theater. We use Shakespeare's wonderful language, his lively playfulness and his desire to explore the world with the means of theater to bring the sensual pleasure of experienced stage events and his own imagination to the audience's eyes and ears.

A play about power and powerlessness, about revenge and forgiveness, rough and subtle at the same time, full of full comedy and music, enigmatic and contradictory, and at the same time Shakespeare's legacy to us all. For he leaves these words to the audience through Prospero:

The spells are over. Our players

Were ghosts all and

Now they melt into air, thin air.

And how this illusion built into nothingness

Will once be cloud-high towers, palaces,

silent churches, indeed the great globe itself,

pass away with everything that took up residence on it

and melt away like this insubstantial spectacle,

disappear without a trace. We are made of such stuff,

from which dreams are made, and our little lives

a sleep begins and ends.

by William Shakespeare

Translation and adaptation by Joachim Lux

Version for the Vienna Burgtheater