"Keiner hat gesagt, dass du ausziehen sollst" von Nick Hornby

In the organizer's words:

(STATE OF THE UNION) - A marriage in ten sessions

"Nobody told you to move out," says Louise. She, a busy doctor, has cheated and Tom, an unemployed music critic, has moved out. Now the two of them go to marriage counseling every week and always meet in a pub beforehand. He orders beer, she orders white wine. They get into the mood for the sessions, discussing whether their marriage is more like a marathon or just an aborted 50-meter sprint, or whether Louise's affair should be seen as one mistake or several. Questions upon questions, which are more or less successfully fought out with sarcastic humor and good punchlines in a pulsating exchange of blows. But when Tom admits to having voted for Brexit out of protest, Louise is beside herself. Could it be that their children and their interest in crossword puzzles are the last things they have in common? Emotionally, the play is somewhere between longing advances, defensiveness, comedy and the seriousness of life. It remains to be seen how their relationship will continue; every meeting seems like a new beginning...

Nick Hornby has been one of Britain's cult authors since his debut "High Fidelity". He loves to write about music, books, sport and neurotic heroes. Many of his bestsellers such as "High Fidelity", "About a Boy" and "A Long Way Down" have been made into films with a prominent cast (including Pierce Brosnan, Toni Colette and Hugh Grant). "State of the Union" ran as a series with twenty ten-minute episodes on ARD until 2022. Nick Hornby lives in London.

The material has now been released for the stage, and we were grateful to receive permission from Rowohlt Verlag to dramatize the book for the stage. The same happened in 2019 with "The Life of Vernon Subutex", which we performed as a three-part play with great success. So what could be more natural than to shyly ask the two actors from Subutex again if... They enthusiastically agreed.

"A conversation piece for people who don't want to go straight to the boulevard theater. The Stalburg can and does that like no other theater far and wide." Judith von Sternburg, FR

"The way the two struggle to find a way out of their marital crisis in the two-and-a-half-hour play, which includes an intermission, and think about other partners and new beginnings is amusing, the audience laughs in agreement and celebrated the actors with prolonged applause at the premiere." Nicole Nadine Seliger, FAZ