Just cuddling and keeping quiet for a while — would that be possible? Talking gets the couple no further. They wrestle over what they want, what is right in life, what each of them hopes to achieve, and what they might one day leave behind together: a child. "The play is written with incredible intelligence and tenderness," says Roman Pertl, who plays the man in the two-person piece. "Again and again, the situations reminded me of my own life. What the couple goes through is very real." In a cleverly interwoven dialogue that sometimes leaps whole years between two lines, Duncan Macmillan deftly negotiates the great questions of existence, from cradle to grave, in Lungs. At the start the couple are in their early twenties; in their thirties they grapple with the question of children, until she finally falls pregnant and loses the baby. The loss leads to separation. Years later they meet again. A new pregnancy. This time the child grows up safe and sound. Time slips by, he dies, and the child visits her in the care home now and then. As if in slow motion, time stretches out in the drama until the man and woman make their decision, then races towards the end. An allegory for our present moment? The play gets under the audience''s skin, Roman Pertl recounts. At a post-show talk following one performance, audience members spoke of how deeply they could feel what the two were portraying. Many were reminded of their own relationships and conflicts; another was simply glad no longer to be in his early thirties. It seemed that no one was left cold by what the couple on stage lived through. If this gripping rollercoaster of emotions has whetted your appetite, you can catch it on one of the upcoming dates at the Hessisches Landestheater Marburg: 20 December 2016, 21 December 2016, 29 January 2017.
The Things We Put Ourselves Through in Relationships
