Nationaltheater Mannheim / Schnawwl

Roel Adam (translation by Eva Maria Pieper)

Director: Marcelo Diaz
Stage: Christian Thurm
Costumes: Eva Roos
Musical Director: Arni Arnold
Staging: Alice Quadflieg
Fight choreography: Axel Hambach

Isolde: Jule Kracht
Bragane: Simone Oswald
Tristan: Uwe Topmann
King Mark: David Benito Garcia

Harp: Beate Anton
Percussion: Ellen Mayer

As long as the earth is turning, as long the night follows the day, as long as the skies are blue and the grass green - so long shall the friendship between between king Mark and his knight Tristan last. Thus Mark swears on the day he rides with Tristan forth from his domain to marry Isolde and unite his kingdom with hers. But Isolde has no plans to get married - except by the man who will beat her best knight in combat. Mark takes her up on the offer and sends the disguised Tristan to the fight. Tristan is unaware that the black knight he faces is Isolde herself. As the fight is concluded there is no victor - but two who have found each other in battle.

Roel Adam has re-interpreted one of the biggest legends of the European Middle Ages: Not a potion, but the lust of the fight unites the lovers. Tristan does not become a victim of magic, but of his own feelings. Isolde is not a toy of higher powers, but a woman who lives by her own radical rules. Mark is not the victim of treason, but a traitor himself. Love and death, guilt and innocence, selfishness and self-abandonment are the searing flames of passion. Great material in a great adaptation.