Zusatztext A finely perceptive! eloquently tender and exquisite new play. John Simon! New York Riveting. . . . Subtle and powerful! [with] marvelous emotional complexity. John Lahr! The New Yorker A tense family drama. . . . Spare! emotionally brutal. Time Out New York A truly devastating piece of theater. New York Daily News The best new play in twenty years. . . . This perfectly written masterwork shimmers with delicacy and precision. The Journal News Informationen zum Autor William Nicholson Klappentext How well do we know the people we marry? Is it wrong to decide it's time to be honest? Is love enough to save a family? In The Retreat from Moscow , William Nicholson, the celebrated author of Shadowlands , tells the powerful story of a husband who decides to be truthful in his marriage, and of the wife and son whose lives will never be the same again. Edward and Alice have been married for thirty-three years. He is a teacher at a boys school, perfectly at home with his daily crossword and lately engrossed in reading about Napoleon's costly invasion of Moscow. She is an observant Catholic, exacting and opinionated, and has been collecting poems about lost love for a new anthology. Jamie, their diffident thirty-two year old son, is visiting for the weekend when Edward announces he has met another woman. With the coiled intensity of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and the embracing empathy of Edward Albee's best family dramas, The Retreat from Moscow shines a breathtakingly natural light on the fallout of a shattered marriage.ACT ONE The stage in darkness. Two armchairs. A table with three upright chairs. A sink, cooker, fridge, and cupboard. Three people sit motionless in the darkness. edward, a schoolteacher in his late fifties, in one armchair. His wife, alice, about the same age, in the other. Their son, jamie, in his early thirties, at the table. All three actors remain onstage throughout. When one character is no longer present in a scene, he becomes still, and the lights go down on him. The audience can still see him, but the other characters cannot. The shadowed actor sits or stands, suspended in time, and does not react to what takes place around him, until the lights return him to the action. Lights come up on EDWARD. He reads from a book. EDWARD: "As men dropped in the intense cold, their bodies were stripped of clothing by their own comrades, and left naked in the snow, still alive." ( Lights come up on JAMIE, sipping at a mug of coffee, listening .) "Others, having lost or burned their shoes, were marching with bare feet and legs. The frozen skin and muscles were exfoliating themselves, like successive layers of wax statues. The bones were exposed, but being frozen, were completely insensitive to pain. Some officers, suffering from diarrhoea, found themselves unable to do their trousers up. I myself helped one of these unfortunates to put his asterisk-asterisk-asterisk back, and button himself up. He was crying like a child." JAMIE: I wonder what word he used. EDWARD: Who knows? Something French. JAMIE: Yes. I suppose it would be. EDWARD: A surprisingly large number of the officers kept diaries. Over a hundred and fifty have survived. Remarkable, really, given the conditions on the retreat. JAMIE: How many died? EDWARD: Napoleon marched four hundred fifty thousand men across the Niemen. Less than twenty thousand came back. How was the drive down? jamie: Not bad. I left just after five. ( Both check their watches, making the same movement. ) EDWARD: An hour and three-quarters. I wouldn't have thought there was that much traffic on a Saturday evening. <...

8220;A finely perceptive, eloquently tender and exquisite new play.&#8221; &#8212;John Simon, *New York

&#8220;Riveting. . . . Subtle and powerful, [with] marvelous emotional complexity.&#8221; &#8212;John Lahr, The New Yorker

&#8220;A tense family drama. . . . Spare, emotionally brutal.&#8221; &#8212;Time Out New York

&#8220;A truly devastating piece of theater.&#8221; &#8212;New York Daily News

&#8220;The best new play in twenty years. . . . This perfectly written masterwork shimmers with delicacy and precision.&#8221; &#8212;The Journal News

• Autorentext

  William Nicholson

  Klappentext

  How well do we know the people we marry? Is it wrong to decide it's time to be honest? Is love enough to save a family? In *The Retreat from Moscow, William Nicholson, the celebrated author of *Shadowlands**, tells the powerful story of a husband who decides to be truthful in his marriage, and of the wife and son whose lives will never be the same again.

  Edward and Alice have been married for thirty-three years. He is a teacher at a boys school, perfectly at home with his daily crossword and lately engrossed in reading about Napoleon's costly invasion of Moscow. She is an observant Catholic, exacting and opinionated, and has been collecting poems about lost love for a new anthology. Jamie, their diffident thirty-two year old son, is visiting for the weekend when Edward announces he has met another woman. With the coiled intensity of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and the embracing empathy of Edward Albee's best family dramas, The Retreat from Moscowshines a breathtakingly natural light on the fallout of a shattered marriage.

  Zusammenfassung
  *The celebrated author of&#160;Shadowlands* tells the powerful story of a husband who decides to be truthful in his marriage, and of the wife and son whose lives will never be the same again.

  “A finely perceptive, eloquently tender and exquisite new play.” —New York

  **How well do we know the people we marry? Is it wrong to decide it’s time to be honest? Is love enough to save a family?&#160;

  Edward and Alice have been married for thirty-three years. He is a teacher at a boys school, perfectly at home with his daily crossword and lately engrossed in reading about Napoleon’s costly invasion of Moscow. She is an observant Catholic, exacting and opinionated, and has been collecting poems about lost love for a new anthology. Jamie, their diffident thirty-two year old son, is visiting for the weekend when Edward announces he has met another woman. With the coiled intensity of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and the embracing empathy of Edward Albee’s best family dramas, The Retreat from Moscow shines a breathtakingly natural light on the fallout of a shattered marriage.

  Leseprobe
  ACT ONE

  *The stage in darkness.

  Two armchairs. A table with three upright chairs. A sink, cooker, fridge, and cupboard.

  Three people sit motionless in the darkness. edward, a schoolteacher in his late fifties, in one armchair. His wife, alice, about the same age, in the other. Their son, jamie, in his early thirties, at the table.

  All three actors remain onstage throughout. When one character is no longer present in a scene, he becomes still, and the lights go down on him. The audience can still see him, but the other characters cannot. The shadowed actor sits or stands, suspended in time, and does not react to what takes place around him, until the lights return him to the action.

  Lights come up on EDWARD. He reads from a book.*

  EDWARD: "As men dropped in the intense cold, their bodies were stripped of clothing by their own comrades, and left naked in the snow, still alive."

  (Lights come up on JAMIE, sipping at a mug of coffee, listening.)

  "Others, having lost or burned their shoes, were marching with bare feet and legs. The frozen skin and muscles were exfoliating themselves, like successive layers of wax statues. The bones were exposed, but being frozen, were completely insensitive to pain. Some officers, suffering from diarrhoea, found themselves unable to do their trousers up. I myself helped one of these unfortunates to put his asterisk-asterisk-asterisk back, and button hi…