EINE MORITAT IN ZWÖLF BILDERN
by Max Frisch
DIRECTED BY: Claudia Bossard
PFAUEN
PREMIERE: 25.09.2025
2 hour 15 minutes (no interval)
A banker kills the building superintendent. Just like that – zack! – with an axe, for no reason. While his defense attorney, Dr. Hahn, desperately searches for a motive, prosecutor Martin capitulates before the senselessness of the crime. There’s a crack in the order of things. A murderer without motive. A justice system that just wants vacation. Martin, the guardian of law, sees his world turned upside down. On the eve of the murder trial, he burns all the case files and flees.
Enough of monotony, bourgeois confines, and the exhausting charade with his wife – who, of all people, chose Dr. Hahn as her lover. During his escape into the woods, a new identity takes hold of him. As the legendary "Count Öderland with an axe in hand," he roams the land, hacking his way mercilessly through the underworld.
More and more people follow his trail, stylizing him – Public Enemy No. 1 – into the figurehead of a diffuse rebellion of dropouts. Axe sales boom. But an axe doesn’t think. It feels no disgust. It kills. Life has become murder. Such a life no longer has a story. Pure mechanics replace responsibility. As violence escalates, the state responds with ruthless measures – until only Öderland, drifting between trance and delusion, can end the bloodshed.
With GRAF ÖDERLAND, Zug director Claudia Bossard dissects the explosive cocktail of social alienation, populism, and state failure. She crafts a nuanced psychological portrait where ego and desire ignite revolution, and the identity crisis of a middle-aged man becomes fuel that ignites the blaze.
Content Note: This production contains explicit depictions of violence and murder.
Sensory Note: This production contains fog.
'Director Claudia Bossard tackles this challenge with determination, directing an enthusiastic ensemble with ease and humour. [...] Flexible characters who contort themselves as smoothly as if they were dancing.'
‘Zurich's ÖDERLAND is not a museum piece of literature, but a vivid psychological portrait of a society that no longer trusts itself. [...] Claudia Bossard presents a lively ensemble bursting with wit – led by the multi-faceted public prosecutor (Thomas Wodianka).’
‘The clou of Bossard's approach to the play: she distributes the 25 roles among only seven actresses, who ‘morph’ through all the roles and genders (...). Only Thomas Wodianka is always the prosecutor, who becomes “Graf Öderland” and empathises so deeply with the perpetrator and victim that he himself breaks with norms and conventions.’
