Der zerbrochne Krug (The Broken Jug)

Country judge Adam is truly not to be envied: It’s not just that he tripped and fell when he got out of bed and has a nasty bump on the head. The judiciary wig has also gone missing and he had nightmare – in his dream, he was both the defendant and the judge. And on top of it all, Inspector Walter has announced a visit and his mission is to check that the provincial courts proceed according to standards and orders.

These are the best conditions, therefore, to resolve another delicate case: A valuable jug was broken during the previous night. Marthe Rull appears as both the aggrieved party and the accuser. The whole thing, she says, happened when a nocturnal visitor fled from her daughter Eve’s room. The defendant is Ruprecht, Eve’s fiancé – but he doggedly denies everything. An abstruse trial takes begins, and during its course, the truth is mangled by twisted words and attempts to hush it up. Reality, however, appears more and more similar to Judge Adam’s dream.

Heinrich von Kleist wrote this judiciary farce in the context of a writers’ competition in 1803. He takes an acutely satirical look at the fragility of a legal system whose codes of practice and well-defined terminology often only barely manage to keep in check its sinister opponents – self-interest, abuse of power and arbitrariness. In Kleist’s verbal cascades, alleged truths continue to shift until judges are turned into condemned and bailiffs become judges. But the jug – well, the irreplaceable jug remains irredeemably broken.

For Elsa-Sophie Jach, who staged the world premieres of E.L. Karhu’s “Für meinen Bruder” and “Niederwald” by Wolfram Höll at Diskothek, will give her debut on Schauspiel Leipzig’s Main Stage with “Der zerbrochne Krug (The Broken Jug)“. The production of Kleist’s “Käthchen von Heilbronn” which she created in Munich was shortlisted for the 2023 Berlin Theatertreffen.