Roland Schimmelpfennig

A pub, not long before closing time. Ten people sitting, drinking and talking. It’s not a club, not a birthday party, and it’s no work party. But they stay until morning even though they can’t actually stand one another. They are not the marginalised, not the financially unsuccessful. They are married, have jobs, pensions, and some of them even have children. They drink – not to forget, but because they can afford to. They are the pillars of society, they are the economic miracle generation, or at least its spiritual heritage, those who know the Republic and who move about in it comfortably, even when everything else is at a standstill.
“What is there to complain about in the upturn?” one of them says, and actually means: “It’s not going badly for us at all.” That it could take its revenge, thinks another foggily, but, as quickly as it entered his head, the thought is swilled down again. And so they sit like a council of gods and make the pub Olympus, until they could fly like Icarus.
The speaker is always right, and so they speak, are funny and vulgar, they yell, belch, squawk, and sometimes sing heartrendingly. Right at the end, when the last glass has been emptied, there is even a flash of something like love. But it’s too late: even Amor and Eros drowned in alcohol long ago. For, as the angelic waitress knows, who despite her insight can’t save the drinkers: “That is of course the bad thing about the gastronomy business: we have to live from poisoning those who are so dear to our hearts!” (Announcement Schauspiel Essen)