All das Schöne

How do you react as a child to your mother’s suicide attempt? You write her a list of everything that’s really cool about the world: 1. Ice cream; 2. Water fights; 3. Being allowed to stay up later than usual and watch TV; 4. The colour yellow... You hope that your mother will actually read the list (and not just correct the spelling mistakes), that her depression will end and life will go on. And it does. But not everything automatically gets better. Not now, and not later, when you yourself are grown up, in love and perhaps even thinking about having children of your own. There’s always this strange sadness lurking; there are setbacks, embarrassing situations, injuries. Only the list has grown longer over the years and is now approaching a million: No. 999,997. The alphabet; 999,998. Inappropriate songs at emotional moments; 999,999. Completing a task… What begins as a child’s loving attempt to come to terms with grief becomes a major life project about the value of perhaps unnoticed moments.

Macmillan looks at depression in a highly sensitive and astonishingly funny way. Almost incidentally, and therefore all the more poignantly, he sheds light on the consequences of the condition for the people affected and for those around them. »With the involvement of the audience, who take on small roles throughout, Macmillan with a light touch transforms supposed horrors into strokes of luck« (The New York Times) and he »strikes the perfect balance between what makes you despair about life and what makes it so wonderful« (The Independent).

Duncan Macmillan was born in the UK in 1980. He studied film at the University of Reading, theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama, and playwriting at Birmingham University and the Royal Court Theatre in London. He has worked for the stage, radio and television, primarily for the BBC. He has also directed at theatres in London and New York. Macmillan’s plays include The Most Humane Way to Kill a Lobster (2005), Monster (2007), Lungs (2011) and EVERY BRILLIANT THING (2013). Together with Robert Icke, he adapted and directed George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Play in 2014. With Katie Mitchell, he adapted Reise durch die Nacht after Friederike Mayröcker in 2012 (performed at the Berliner Theatertreffen, the Festival d’Avignon and awarded the Nestroy Prize, all in 2013) and Wunschloses Unglück by Peter Handke (Vienna Burgtheater). Lungs won Best New Play at the Off West End Awards in 2013, among other prizes. He has received many awards including the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting (2005), the Pearson Residency Award (2008), The Old Vic Big Ambition Award (2009) and the CBS Outstanding Drama Award (2012).