The Rats, a “Berliner tragi-comedy” by the great German playwright Gerhart Hauptmann, begins in the disused attic of a barracks. Two women meet there at their peril. One of them, yearning for a baby, persuades the other to relinquish her own child. The tragedy unfolds when the latter, a servant, tries to reassert her maternal rights and comes up against the former’s social superiority. Finished in 1911, this play is nourished by the dark poetry which seems to be emerging slowly from the Berlin of the time.

by Gerhart Hauptmann
director Michael Thalheimer
set design Olaf Altmann
costumes Michaela Barth
music Bert Wrede
with Constanze Becker, Michael Benthin, Henrike Johanna Jörissen, Katrin Klein, Niklas Kohrt, Horst Lebinsky, Sven Lehmann, Lotte Ohm, Barbara Schnitzler, Isabel Schosnig, Mathis Reinhardt, Regine Zimmermann

Deutsches Theater Berlin