De Warme Winkel

Ask AI about the pinnacle of theatre history and the answer is, without a shadow of a doubt: Hamlet.
That comes as no surprise: Shakespeare’s play is a masterful revenge drama that tackles timeless moral dilemmas surrounding love, madness, creativity and death.

We see a dozen robots taking over the theatre: a colourful mix of intelligent vacuum cleaners, bionic quadrupeds and androids in the throes of an existential crisis.
In an interpretation that is as witty as it is confrontational, the robots attempt to reconstruct the world-famous play, like shards of a broken vase.
They try to lose themselves in their roles, yet at the same time reflect hyper-self-consciously on the theatrical forms they employ, whilst exploring, through the iconic characters, what it means to be human.

Just as Hamlet once stood on the threshold between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, we find ourselves today in a transition to the digital age

Is this world-famous work, written in De Warme Winkel’s celebrated, intelligent style and in a highly free adaptation, once again capable of signposting a major change? Will our current world view, just like that of the Middle Ages at the time, soon prove to be completely outdated?

Set against a historic backdrop, R2D2_or_not_2B2 is the Hamlet of the 21st century: as timeless as it is provocatively topical.

At De Warme Winkel, we are crossing swords with the repertory theatre for the first time. Previously, we interwove contemporary issues with iconic works such as Stravinsky’s *Le Sacre du printemps* or Pina Bausch’s *Café Müller*. Now it is the turn of Shakespeare’s Holy Grail.