With plenty of black humor, a clear zeitgeist and a musical bite, Peter Jordan's comedy MARIE-ANTOINETTE takes a wonderfully over-the-top look at the end of the French monarchy - and at our present day. The Schlosstheater Celle presents a turbulent farce about power, powerlessness and historical repetition.
Revolution reigns in Paris, but helplessness reigns in the Palace of Versailles: while the people rage outside, inside Marie-Antoinette and her husband King Louis XVI have been waiting for their announced execution for 15 years now. But the problems were the same then as they are now: Bureaucracy, intrigue and power struggles at all levels. The stalemate gets on the royals' nerves so much that Louis takes matters into his own hands. He has built one of these new-fangled guillotines for himself and his wife, but it has a few design flaws and accidentally produces corpses that were definitely not intended. At the same time, the collar affair boils up again - an age-old intrigue in which no one can see through who was actually trying to kill whom and why. And what does this wretch Napoleon want, who suddenly appears in the castle and seems to be pursuing his very own agenda?
With MARIE-ANTOINETTE, theater maker and author Peter Jordan has written a deadly serious and turbulent comedy that sheds new light on the familiar and shoots bitter arrows into our present. Last but not least, Marie-Antoinette is a feast for four actors and a small band who change attitudes and identities at breakneck speed.
Premiere September 21
Further performances: September 26, 27 and 30, October 2, 4, 7, 11, 15, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 30 and 31, November 2, 6 and 9, 2025
