Itay Tiran's staging of Shakespeare's royal drama is an unsparingly critical reflection on the political present day in his home country of Israel. It is a touching play about a national tragedy in which the personal is irretrievably bound up with the political.

Itay Tiran's Richard III is an unsparingly critical reflection on the political present day in his home country of Israel. It is a touching play about a national tragedy in which the personal is irretrievably bound up with the political. The extraordinary actor Evgenia Dodina plays Richard as an inwardly offended villain who stops at nothing on his way to the throne and who is more focused on maintaining his power than on defending his country. Tiran does not add a single new line of spoken text to Shakespeare's play. But he does let his ensemble sing songs that are connected to key moments in the history of Israel: lyrical songs in bloodied atmosphere that are about liberation, peace and patriotism. For the Israeli-Jewish star actor and director, this production of Shakespeare's famous royal drama was the first work in his home country after he had left it for Europe five years before. The premiere in Jaffa took place one month before the massacre on 7 October 2023. Since then, the hotly debated staging has been considered prophetic.