Thomas Hürlimann

“Once upon a time, there was family Frunz, who successfully produced umbrellas and was able to build a grand villa next to an idyllic lake. But climate changes makes it rain less often, the company goes bankrupt, and the area is not a privilege anymore either: the lake has died and turned into a foul-smelling cesspool.”
In the comedy Der letzte Gast, Thomas Hürlimann sketches a world (Switzerland?) at the brink and near the end. Isolating oneself has become useless and no one is doing anything against the true threat in front of the front door: ‘you get used to anything’, and if there’s no fish anymore, at least the sport fishing club is supposed to continue to exist. But that has something wrong with it as well, the chairman has suddenly died, the search for a new one seems hopeless – until the three members, who are fond of drinking and singing, get worn-out former star actor Oskar Werner into their clutches. He, who has to play the provincial theatres with a programme of Rilke’s work, wishes he was back at the Burgtheater. And, thanks to the wonders of theatre and metamorphosis, even in his alcohol-induced delirium, he manages to bring some colour and imagination to this world of these small-minded people, prudes and neurotics, where the oblivious women swallow their phoniness and trump each other in mental health issues and the men repress their sexuality and booze it away with drinking games.” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)