The Lives of Others

Join Outdoorly for a group theatre experience at the Adelphi Theatre to see The Lives of Others. Meet your Outdoorly host before the performance and enjoy the show as part of a small group experience.

About The Lives of Others

In East Germany, privacy is not guaranteed, and art serves as a form of political resistance in The Lives of Others, a gripping new drama about surveillance, censorship, and the power of intimacy. Book The Lives of Others tickets on London Theatre.

The Lives of Others is a play set in 1984 East Germany, following a writer and an actor whose apartment is bugged by the Stasi, the East German secret police. In the attic above them, Gerd Wiesler is listening; he's a man on a mission to gather evidence against the couple to accuse them of subversion. However, the closer he listens to their private happenings, the harder it is to be unmoved by what he's hearing. What was at first an operation to prove guilt becomes a story about empathy and complicity, and what it means for art to change even the most difficult parts of life.

Robert Icke adapts and directs this first stage version of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's acclaimed film, starring Keira Knightley as Christa-Maria Sieland, Luke Thompson as Georg Dreyman, and Stephen Dillane as Wiesler. Alongside this formidable cast is a masterful creative team including designer Hildegard Bechtler, lighting designer Jon Clark, sound designer Giles Thomas, and composer Max Richter, whose original music makes a mark on this beautiful production.

The Lives of Others in London revisits a story that has only grown more contemporary over time. Living in a culture shaped by surveillance, technological identification, and a loose definition of freedom, this play asks us to ponder what lives on when our thoughts and speech are captured, even in our most intimate moments, and what the cost of humanity means.

Audiences are sure to leave the theatre not only entertained but also pondering their own relationship to technology and creativity.