Our three European theater critics pick their favorite productions of the year — plus a turkey for the festive season.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:04AMSeveral new productions this season that take their cue from European film classics from the 1960s and ’70s, with adaptations of Visconti, Bergman and Polanski.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:48AMProductions in Berlin and Munich grapple with issues that shape our world.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:18AMKirill Serebrennikov, under house arrest in Moscow, is staging a production of “Così Fan Tutte” in Zurich through a process closer to espionage than traditional theater.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:48AMNo playwright is more respected in Germany than Shakespeare. Some productions just have a strange way of showing it.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:48AM“Dionysos Stadt” is a 10-hour epic inspired by the Greek classics that traces the arc of human drama. It’s just one of many new productions on Munich’s stages.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:18PMA crop of new works written by their directors — or maybe directed by their playwrights — is lighting up stages in Berlin and Frankfurt at the beginning of the theater season.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:18AMThe Ruhrtrienniale festival in Germany presents unpredictable works in postindustrial settings. But this year controversy has overshadowed the event.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:18AMIt’s an event more associated with classical music, but drama is in its D.N.A. Two productions of German-language classics at the festival show differing approaches.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:48AMTwo plays at one of the city’s most important theaters make the case for accepting displaced people, as politics there is turning against them.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:48AMFrom Édouard Louis’s novel “History of Violence” to Boccaccio’s 14th-century “Decameron,” German theaters love to mount literary adaptations.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:18AMFrank Castorf led Berlin’s Volksbühne for a quarter century. One of his last productions is being presented again in a showcase of the year’s best German theater.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:48AMRestrained stagings of Schiller and Shakespeare are vital and exciting, but a production based on the New Testament falls flat.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:18AMA German residency for the Gogol Center, a leading Moscow avant-garde group, drew attention to the plight of its leader, Kirill S. Serebrennikov.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:41PMThree plays in Munich and Berlin explore revolutionary ideas and utopian dreams.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:18AMHigh drama and deep moral questions are at the heart of two outstanding productions in Vienna: “The Ten Commandments” and “The Oresteia.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 08:00AMIn Berlin and Munich, theater companies explore themes of exile and return in classics and new work, each directly addressing today’s refugee influx.
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