Die Ärztin (The Doctor)

Dr. Ruth Wolff is a distinguished expert in the medical community. She runs an institute specialising in Alzheimer’s reseach at a prestigious private clinic. However, her undiplomatic style does not always make her popular with her colleagues. As the doctor on call she becomes involved indirectly in the case of a 14-year-old girl who dies following a botched procedure. When a Catholic priest wishes to administer the last rites, Ruth, an agnostic Jew, refuses to allow him into the room. Ruth regards the dispute as a trivial matter where her actions were well within her rights, but the incident soon has major repercussions: internally because some of her colleagues disagree with Ruth’s stance, and externally because the controversy becomes public and an online petition is launched against her. As a consequence, the first sponsors threaten to withdraw their funding from the hospital and the institute. She is also confronted by anti-Semitic and misogynist sentiments from her colleagues. In the end, Ruth finds herself at the centre of a media shitstorm that threatens both her career and her way of life, in which differing views on religion, society and ethics become entwined with issues of identity, ethnicity and gender and remain irreconcilably opposed to each other.  

The writer and director Robert Icke has transposed Arthur Schnitzler’s play «Professor Bernhardi» (1912) vividly into the present. The «Times» of London described «The Doctor» as being «as slippery, muscular and complex as a human heart, more intricate the deeper his dissection goes.» Icke plays brilliantly with the audience’s expectations and experiences – and every time the perspective shifts, they are challenged not only to reinterpret what has happened, but also to question their own beliefs.