Premiere: April 24, 2009
Büchner’s master-piece Danton’s Death is not only a play about the French Revolution. It is a play about all revolutions which in the end devour their own children, and a play about a friendship which will result in cruelty and final settlement between the two revolutionaries: Robespierre and Danton. In parallel scenes, we follow the revolutionary events and the intimate drama of the folk tribune Danton, who opposes the incorruptible priest of the revolution, Robespierre, knowing the price of his opposition. The chamber scenes of the two ex-associates and like-minded revolutionaries are counterpointed with the scenes of heaving masses driven by the chaos of the change of social relationships. The power and its price, the ideals and everyday life swell in this deeply moving play like a sea nobody can resist. Questions about life, morality, death and ethics which this play poses are the questions to which we still haven’t found the answers.
Danton’s Death will cast the whole Drama Ensemble of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, led by the German director, Hansgünther Heyme, the first-time guest of our theatre.
