About the work
Marius von Mayenburg's comedy was premiered in 2007 at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz under his own direction. The play is a black satire on the contemporary obsession with beauty and condenses the material onto four actors who share all the roles. The fast-paced, punch-line-rich text has been translated into more than forty languages and is one of the most internationally performed German contemporary plays.
Plot
Lette is an ordinary employee who, after years, learns that he is unbearably ugly to everyone around him — only he himself never noticed. His company does not send him to presentations, his wife loves him only at night, his boss wants to be rid of him. Lette has a cosmetic surgeon give him a new nose, new eyes, a new face. He becomes a beauty. But the chaos only begins now: his old colleagues love the new Lette, women throw themselves at him. Then the surgeon makes the same face for other clients — Lette is suddenly just one of many identical beauties. His identity dissolves in the beauty market.
Cultural significance
Der Hässliche became a European audience hit and was performed in productions from the Royal Court Theatre London to the Piccolo Teatro Milano. The formal challenge — four actors play all the roles and switch in seconds, without costume changes — makes the play a feast for ensemble work. In an age of Instagram aesthetics, Mayenburg strikes a nerve and shows the dark side of physical self-optimisation with comic sharpness.