Joanna Lewicka directs Robert Menasse's Paradise of the Unloved

A political play commissioned by the Burgtheater in Vienna - but never staged there. The premiere took place in 2006 at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. After 18 years, it returns to the German repertoire in a new production by Joanna Lewicka. Premiere 15. December 2024 in Schleswig-Holstein.

‘Bad things are happening in the Danish state’, the head of government is helpless, the interests of his deputy are more personal than political. The leader of the right-wing populist opposition is climbing the ranks of power, aiming to seize it. Politics has abdicated, politicians no longer have power, only offices. Freedom of the press is under threat. While chaos and confusion rule, an assassination is being planned. But what is a political assassination when politics is long dead? A historical quote? A farce? Perhaps a fairy tale: for though dead, they are still alive today.

The paradise of the unloved (German: Das Paradies der Ungeliebten) is a play about what can happen when right-wing populist forces destroy democracy. Or, in the words of Menasse himself, an award-winning writer and political essayist: ‘It will soon have to be decided which type of European will define the future: the universal European or the one-dimensional European. And that also means: whether human law or the law of the fist will rule on this continent again.’