Albert Ostermaier

An empty public house: ‘The Everyman’. Heavy, dark wooden tables. Some tables have chairs on them, some don’t. In the middle of the pub, the publican is sitting alone at his regular table in his Sunday best. There's not a guest in sight, not a sound, only the publican is speaking. As if for his life. Swearing. About impudent guests. About impatient customers who can’t wait for a table and just sitting down without asking. The dumb ones that ask for lactose-free milk in their coffee but then gobble down an extra-large slice of cheese strudel. About the philistines, the freeloaders and the skinflints. He really doesn’t ask much of his guests. “Say hello, order, pay, say thank you and goodbye!” Instead of this he gets rude behaviour, impertinent special requests and stingy tips. And there’s barely a guest that still appreciates the great art of cookery on display at ‘The Everyman.’ They are indifferent to the love with which the calf’s brain is roasted and have no idea bout the sweetness that a Salzburger dumpling just has to have. A publican can do naught but despair, despair of the public house and of the world, of life and death.
“The pub is my world. Even if I’ve always said that the guests are the end of the world! So are we! Each one of us is the end of the world and chooses his publican and his pub.”
Albert Ostermaier’s publican has read Hofmannsthal and Handtke and berates his guests in the most beautiful tradition of Thomas Bernhard. An unfathomable monologue, furious and comic, straight out of the dark heart of the pub ‘The Everyman’.