Four people meet on a cruise ship to Greece and join up in groups of two on the ship’s deck. Three are trying to escape their own lives. There is the young man who got cold feet three days before the wedding and is now taking his honeymoon trip alone. And the elderly man who has left his family because of a young woman who does not want to know anything about him. And the older woman who lost her husband three months earlier. Only one young woman has an end goal in sight: she is on the ship to travel to Patmos, where her German boyfriend is working in a hotel and is waiting for her.
The dialogues between the characters are initially distinguished by the fact that everyone talks only about himself, is not heard by the others and does not listen to them. In the ensuing sequence of one-on-one dialogues, they meet more openly, begin to get to know each other, to give things away. But the talks always end noncommittally. The end of the journey is also the end of their relationships; everyone goes back to their life alone.
The time after the cruise is over is present throughout the play. Deferred, retrospective monologues, in which the four travelers reflect on their subjective perception, make reference to the future. In the end, each figure will claim to have found happiness.
"The characters take us on a treasure hunt through biographies which are not unlike our own, in pieces that trace criminal psychograms without wrongdoing as if they were on the drawing board." (Ann-Marie Arioli, Stückwerk 4, deutschschweizer Dramatik, Theater der Zeit)