For many years he waged war; for many years he wandered around the world. Now Odysseus is back in Ithaca. Overflowing with gifts, a rich man, he lands on the beach, ready to resume his old life. Ready for peace. But the years of war have also changed Ithaca. Odysseus returns to his homeland - and finds a place that has become alien to him. Although he returns victoriously, he is forced to realize that he can not escape the consequences of the war, neither the actual nor the spiritual devastation. And the stranger his homeland feels to him, the less he feels understood by his wife Penelope, the more intense this anger inside of him gets. A wrath he believed to have already overcome…
For the great cultural project ODYSSEE EUROPA, Christoph Ransmayr writes against the backdrop of Homer's Odyssey a bit about the return of Odysseus. The piece premiered at the Schauspielhaus Dortmund: Odysseus, Verbrecher. (Announcement of the Schauspielhaus Dortmund)