About the work
“Das Dinner” is a stage adaptation of the novel “Het diner” (2009, English “The Dinner”) by the Dutch writer Herman Koch, which appeared in German in 2010 as “Angerichtet”, translated by Heike Baryga. The adaptation is by Karla Mäder and András Dömötör and premiered on 26 October 2024 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, directed by Dömötör. The material had reached the stage before: in the Netherlands a theatre version directed by Kees Prins opened in 2012, and in German-speaking theatres it has been performed in other adaptations under the title “Angerichtet” since its first German-language staging in Ingolstadt on 28 April 2012.
Plot
Two brothers and their wives sit down to dinner at an upmarket restaurant in Amsterdam: Serge Lohman, a popular politician tipped to become prime minister, with Babette, and Paul, a former history teacher who had to give up his job, with Claire. Course after course they avoid the real reason for the evening: their fifteen-year-old sons attacked a homeless woman, who died; a security camera filmed the assault and the footage was shown on television, but the boys have not yet been identified. Serge wants to force a confession, while the others want to keep the crime quiet to protect their sons.
Cultural significance
The novel became an international bestseller: it won the Dutch NS Publieksprijs in 2009, was published in more than 30 languages and has been filmed several times, including by Menno Meyjes in the Netherlands in 2013, in Italy as “I nostri ragazzi” in 2014 and in the United States in 2017 with Richard Gere and Laura Linney. It is told by an unreliable first-person narrator; Alex Preston in The Guardian praised it as an entertaining study of the evil concealed behind middle-class good manners, while Janet Maslin in The New York Times sharply rejected the characters' morality.