Final with “Macbeth” at the Munich Volkstheater

It was the last premiere in the Munich Volkstheater on Brienner Strasse: Philipp Arnold staged Shakespeare's tragedy “Macbeth”.

Read our premiere review here:

• With “Macbeth” the Munich Volkstheater says goodbye to Brienner Strasse on June 20.

• Philipp Arnold directed the tragedy by William Shakespeare.

• Jakob Immervoll plays the title role at the Volkstheater.

“At the beginning”, Jakob Immervoll calls out to the technicians in the Munich Volkstheater - and immediately receives a neutral lighting mood on the stage. If only it were so easy for Immervoll's character, King Macbeth, to go back to the beginning, to the point where everything has shifted - in his head. But the Scottish temporal lobe fantasies become bloody reality, because Macbeth follows his truth unconditionally and brutally. In doing so, he himself becomes his worst enemy, and is hopelessly stuck in an inner hell.

Philipp Arnold has now staged Shakespeare's tragedy, which premiered in 1606, for popular theater;

the premiere was on Friday.

She started the final in the house on Brienner Strasse.

There, with this work, the curtain will fall for the last time on June 20, before the city stage moves into its new building on Tumblinger Strasse.

“Macbeth” are 105 concentrated minutes

There are concentrated, atmospherically tightly woven 105 non-stop minutes in which Macbeth staggers inexorably towards his destruction.

Arnold focuses entirely on this man in the now - the director is not interested in how he became what he is.

His aim is to show what can threaten if you trust the offspring of your own brain more than anything else.

When what is supposedly truthful turns into madness.

Viktor Reim tore open the stage and exposed what was built in: spotlights, cables, pulleys.

All of this can be seen here as well as Macbeth's soul life is revealed.

Only the technology is much tidier.

Nightmarish figures torment Macbeth

What drives, drives and torments the Scotsman is clear from the start: nightmarish figures, faceless and with long-jointed fingers - as if escaped from “Pan’s Labyrinth” - slide across the stage in the twilight.

The three witches who appear to Macbeth and Banquo and predict the future will later be recruited from them.

From now on, the former receives this “call to me from beyond nature”, which prophesies, whispers and comments on what happened.

Don't worry, it's only in his head - but Jakob Immervoll shows how tormenting fantasies can be.

He approaches the figure with respect and finds a compelling, convincing approach.

His Macbeth is a victim of himself and therefore a perpetrator of his environment.

Driven and driven.

Like a dog, he panted for the crown once - of course only after a witch has released the coveted object - and shows how fanaticism makes us animals.

Anne Stein is a strong Lady Macbeth

Immervoll has a strong partner in Anne Stein. Her Lady Macbeth is less a power-hungry instigator than a self-confident mistress of the situation: Until she realizes that her husband will continue to compose the symphony of horror. In the sleepwalking scene, Stein touchingly shows how her figure is plagued by guilt - and treats her to an unsentimental, therefore dignified, death. “More than fear of the real thing, we are frightened by the horror,” it says at one point. This is exactly what this “Macbeth” demonstrates in a powerful way. Big applause.