Beware of Pity — Schaubuhne Berlin and Complicite

Overview

Schaübuhne Berlin is back. After setting the 2010 Sydney Festival alight with an improv-heavy and blackly humorous remix of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the Germans have returned for the 2019 festival.

Beware of Pity is a collaboration with Simon McBurney from that other crew of mavericks, Complicité. The play is loosely based on a novel of the same name by Stefan Zweig (the man whose memoirs influenced Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel). The story follows an Austrian cavalry officer in a complicated relationship with a millionaire's daughter. Billed as a "prescient portrait of a Europe stumbling toward chaos", this will definitely be one of the brutes of Sydney Festival.

Beware of Pity is part of Sydney Festival's dramatic and diverse 2019 program. Check out the full lineup here.