Orest

With Orest, John von Düffel continues his antiquities project, which he has started with great success in 2012 with Ödipus City at Deutsches Theater Berlin. Here, too, he combines three ancient Greek dramas (Sophocles’ Electra, Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, and Euripides’ Electra) into one new comprehensive tragedy about revenge and guilt. Orestes, who – instigated and aided by Electra – slaughters his mother and her husband, to avenge his murdered father, is the center of John von Düffel’s “impressive antique adaptation, which he no longer calls a ‘tragedy’, but which remains quite a tragedy in its tragic anti-hero, in his painful and at time comical suffering.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

“John von Düffel’s plot, an ‘Orest compilation’ as brisk as it is conclusive, the Atreides kill underneath a godless sky … All there is here are their own acts, their own guilt, their own responsibility … Aighistos and Klytaimnestra are dead – but there is no triumph, as much as Electra tries to evoke it. (For herself and her brother Orest) revenge brings no peace, no reconciliation, but rather the opposite: Agony. Pain. Unredemption.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)