Photo: Daddy Issues, Escher Theater, 2025 © Jeannine Unsen

“Shakespeare, time and time again!” The English writer is a monument that has withstood time itself, visited and revisited by millions – an inevitable colossus of English Literature, and of theatre in particular. Today, roughly 400 years after his death, his unparalleled fame and authority remain unshaken. This raises the question: are we doomed to study, copy, counter, and contrast him for all eternity? In fact, are we being held hostage by a dead poet?

At Escher Theater, director Anne Simon confronts our relentless need to engage with the “unabating patriarch of theatre” and uncovers its underlying compulsions. Daddy Issues. Or: Chasing Shakespeare in (b) Minor is a unique comedy about everything we think we know about the famous writer – and the many ways of handling the beast.

Discovering Shakespeare

While analyzing, categorizing, or renovating ominous sculptures on what appears to be an abstract construction site, two workers come across one particularly old, dusty statue that stands out from the rest. It turns out to be nothing less than a breathing depiction of the greatest writer of all time: William Shakespeare.

As children of the 21st century, the characters are quick to share their discovery on social media, looking for ways to exploit it for their own gain. However, Shakespeare’s legacy is vast, and the mission—though not clearly defined—raises some major questions. Torn between tearing down, replicating, or replacing the statue, “the cast and crew stand up to this behemoth of the stage, hoping eventually to come to terms with him.”

A narrative sandbox

Anne Simon describes the work process that led to the play as an associative game. Together with her stage and costume designer, Loriana Casagrande, and with the support of her assistant director, Gilles Heinisch, and the actors—Pitt Simon, Nora Zrika, and Georges Goerens, a musician responsible for the play’s auditory backdrop—they unearthed numerous pop-cultural references, ideas, and quotes from the backs of their minds, merging their collective “half-knowledge” of all things Shakespearean into the final script. The result is Daddy Issues: experimental by nature, continuing the common thread in Anne’s body of work. 

Anne’s plays rarely fit into a single drawer and often challenge their viewers. Occasionally, Anne is asked about the meaning of her plays—a question that is often met with confusion: “What I show on stage, is not the only possible interpretation there is. What you get out of the performance, is always what you bring to the theatre.” For her, Daddy Issues is “neither an interpretation, nor a source, nor a text,” but rather a sandbox that invites the audience to construct their own narratives. 

“too white, too masculine, too royalist and (today) wordily elitist”

Opinions on how to approach Shakespeare in modern times appear conflicted. Hardliners on one side demand the uncompromising revival of the original Shakespeare that never really existed—even the grand master himself compiled his texts from different sources. On the other side, playwrights and critics call for a burial of the bard in order to make room for new creations, ignoring his deeply intertwined presence within our modern culture, far beyond the theatre stage.

Despite their continuing relevance today, literary classics like Shakespeare’s are clearly from another era. They embody values and views that the characters in Daddy Issues deem “too white, too masculine, too royalist and (today) wordily elitist.” And yet, Anne believes that Shakespeare’s works—even those based on historical events—touch something utterly human, rendering them universally relatable and timeless.

“The story is whatever you’re gonna get out of it.”

Keep it or leave it—is that the question? Not necessarily. Anne Simon opts for a middle path, exploring through comedy the different ideas we hold today about Shakespeare and the complexities of dealing with cultural heritage. Daddy Issues, however, offers no clear answers. “It’s essentially a clown’s play, in the actual sense of the word,” she explains—an homage to the creativity and playfulness of Shakespeare, who, she notes, didn’t take himself too seriously either. In the end, Anne says, “the story is whatever you’re gonna get out of it.”