Sibylle Berg

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Picture: Thilo Beu

Don't Spoil The Surprise!

A Christmas play

Christmas, a celebration of enforced family reunions. With foreboding, the parents - baby boom hippies, academics, and still enemies of "the system" - await the annual visit of their ill-bred offspring. Where did their progressive education go wrong? How did they fail to produce pot-smoking revolutionaries, and instead turn their children into career-driven philistines? The children's return is motivated solely by material interests. Marie and Lukas would like to inherit the family mansion, and think their parents would be better off in a nice retirement home.

Play Trailer

"The mother: feminist, drinker, an extravagant Susan Sontag type. Can't stand her kids, who she sees as too conformist. The father: someone who has to retrieve the TV set from the cellar for the benefit of his visiting kids. … The children: out-and-out careerists and representatives of the neocon bourgeoisie… This family celebration, with its ritual exchange of catty remarks, brings many a surprise to light … witty, pointed, mean."

Süddeutsche Zeitung

"A light farce for intellectuals"

Frankfurter Rundschau

Premiere: 12/2/2010, Theater Bonn
Direction: Maaike van Langen
Publisher: Rowohlt Theater Verlag