Sommer­sonnen­wende

Summer solstice, 21 June: A house with a large garden, lots of guests, the scent of rosemary – what a wonderful evening! Isabel and Albert are throwing a party. Surprisingly however Isabel's brother Victor suddenly appears on the terrace with his family and dog! Who invited them? Isabel has inherited the house after her father's death, Victor's family has inherited the family butchery and all the money – „those pigs“, Albert thinks to himself. But for now he has to keep his composure, because family is family and you can't not invite them. But why is the garden shed „occupied“? It was father's mausoleum after all. Where did the dog find the bone and what's hiding in the bloody bin bag? Between meatballs, Tupperware and lots of drinks, a summer night sets the stage for a fierce family argument in which nobody wants to lose their head: „How nice to have you here!“
In Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a family celebration becomes the scene of frictions, compulsions, lust and unconscious destructive whimsies. The power of the family and old roles that people, long since grown up, still fall back into, flash up sometimes comically, sometimes menacingly, until the bourgeois façade of the familiar home eerily begins to crumble.