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Die Brüder Karamasow

based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

”There are two Europes”, Heiner Müller wrote in 1989. “One shaped by Rome, the other by Byzantium.” In the past, Berlin used to mark the geographic borderline between these two cultural spheres; in the meantime, the line has shifted across the Dnieper, where a war is being waged today. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s last great novel couched in the guise of a crime story, employs a“polyphonic”approach (Mikhail Bakhtin) to uncover the ideological and philosophical voices of the systems prevalent in the West (liberalism) and East (orthodoxy) in a manner that remains striking to this day. The questions that Dostoyevsky analyses in relation to the murder of the father Fyodor Karamazov and the suspicions subsequently cast on his sons Dmitry, Ivan and Alyosha are the ultimate conundrums of human existence and thematise the concepts of God-man and the ideal society. The impulse that drives the family to become increasingly enmeshed in a maze of emotions and laws is nothing less than love – in this case, for the femme fatale Grushenka. Dostoyevsky is a modernist and knows that love needs money – actually 3,000 roubles - like fire needs air.

Following in the wake of Dämonen / Demons, Erniedrigte und Beleidigte / The Insulted and Injured, Schuld und Sühne / Crime and Punishment and Der Spieler / The Gambler, Frank Castorf adds his interpretation of the great Russian writer’s last novel to his own magnum opus, the exploration and analysis of“planet Dostoyevsky”, with this adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov.

A co-production of the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Wiener Festwochen.

Duration: 6h 20min, one break

  

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With: Hendrik Arnst (Fjodor Pawlowitsch Karamasow), Marc Hosemann (Dmitrij Fjodorowitsch Karamasow), Alexander Scheer (Iwan Fjodorowitsch Karamasow), Daniel Zillmann (Alexej Fjodorowitsch Karamasow), Sophie Rois (Pawel Fjodorowitsch Smerdjakow), Kathrin Angerer (Agrafena Alexandrowna Swetlowa (Grusenka)), Lilith Stangenberg (Katerina Iwanowna Werchowzewa), Jeanne Balibar (Starez Sossima, Katerina Ossipowna Chochlakowa und der Teufel), Patrick Güldenberg (Michail Ossipowitsch Rakitin), Margarita Breitkreiz (Lisaweta Smerdjastschaja) and Frank Büttner (Vater Ferapont)

Director: Frank Castorf
Stage Designer: Bert Neumann
Costumes: Bert Neumann
Light Design: Lothar Baumgarte
Video: Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull
Camera: Andreas Deinert, Mathias Klütz, Adrien Lamande
Live Editing: Jens Crull
Music: Wolfgang Urzendowsky
Sound: Klaus Dobbrick, Tobias Gringel
Boom Arm: William Minke, Dario Brinkmann
Dramaturgy: Sebastian Kaiser