The Vienna Akademietheater commissioned plays from five prominent playwrights, Jenny Erpenbeck, Nino Haratischwili, Elfriede Jelinek, Terèzia Mora and Sofi Oksanen, to present pieces on the current situation in Europe. The result, The European supper, draws a picture of a crumbling contintent.
World premiere: Austrian National Theatre, 2017
Roles: 2 F
“The strongest text of the evening is written by Sofi Oksanen: she places two women against each other, Darja and Mary, a young Ukrainian egg donor in debt and an unintentionally childless British woman. The director Barbara Frey brings this dialogue to the stage in the most simple conceivable way: Katharina Lorenz sits on the left in a chair in red as a donor who initially has been tormented by the donor agency with questions about her private life. On the rights side sits in a chair Catrin Striebeck in green as a woman who has been struggling for years to get pregnant. She tells her emotional pain in a sarcastic tone – and is branded as the cold-heared in this unequal duo.”
“Oksanen offers a strong picture of the exploitation of the female body without losing sight of the understanding the protagonists’ motives.”