Production: Ljubljana City Theatre (Mestno gledališče Ljubljansko)

One night will reveal all the fears, wounds and lies. Questions will have to be answered, accounts settled. The German playwright, dramaturg, translator and director Marius von Mayenburg is considered one of the most exciting contemporary playwrights. All of his plays painfully expose the various problems of modern society, though they mostly deal with themes within the family and with maladjusted individuals.

Ex is the story of a married couple who no longer see each other. Daniel and Katarina, both highly educated (he an architect, she a doctor), outwardly appear to be a successful couple, but in reality their relationship is entirely empty. Both are dissatisfied with life; their careers are not as brilliant as they would like, their small children exhaust them, and they are tired and embittered. Katarina is aggressive and toxic, while Daniel withdraws and resorts to a passive aggression that inflicts wounds no less deep. One evening, as they trade insults as usual, Daniel’s former lover Janja appears at the door. After a quarrel with her current partner she has found herself out on the street and, in despair, has come to them. Her arrival only pours oil on the fire of the couple’s quarrel. The animosity, provocations, accusations and humiliations know no end. It also turns out that Daniel’s relationship with Janja has never been entirely resolved.

An Average Sorrow

…When they are alone, Katarina and Daniel talk using short, often incomplete sentences. This is the kind of dialogue we can allow ourselves when we understand one another without words. Or when we know that we do not understand one another and would not, even if we used the most eloquent arguments. When we are defeated. When Janja bursts into their intimacy, she acts as a catalyst that unleashes a torrent of words in everyone, especially in Daniel, as each of them confronts their own defeat. The gaps in this laconic, intimate dialogue are not the silences in which partners listen to one another like birds listening to the night, but bottomless abysses gaping in the midst of an everyday life in which everything seems fine. “Everything” looks like an uncertain, sometimes frantic swaying at the edge of these abysses, where everyday squabbles are welcome because they draw the gaze away from them. Janja disrupts the delicate balance of a partnership that is not happy, yet is well-rehearsed enough to protect them both from falling. Now all three begin to slide towards an abyss that threatens to swallow them. They cling to one another and talk without stopping so as not to be swallowed…

— Špela Virant

No One Knows They Are Gone

…Mayenburg’s text reflects a profound understanding of life as a couple, the finest layers of human relationships, and the deep troubles, dilemmas and hopes of each of the three actors. If we, as observers, have even a shred of courage, we will be given the precious opportunity to glimpse the dark corridors of our own soul in the stabs of words, fists and thoughts they exchange. Then we can ask ourselves: what is it with me — how far will I manage to rise above the cesspit in which I more or less often find myself? Or, more importantly: will I be able to refrain from judging others when I see that they have found their way within it? …

— Suzana Zagorc