Die Leiden des jungen Werther

Goethe's first success was a young man's letters about loving someone else's fiancée, and it made him famous across Europe at twenty-four. This evening gives the story back to her. Walter Hesse's play is Lotte's version of the immortal story, as the house's own subtitle puts it: how did she live through those dramatic events? Silvia Reichert plays her alone. It is a small, sharp corrective to a book whose hero has had two and a half centuries of sympathy and whose Lotte has had a name and a silhouette.