Another unbearably hot evening. 8:54pm. Suzy Storck sits by the window on this hot and airless night, waiting for her husband to come home. Upstairs she can hear her children, yelling and clamouring at their bedroom door. She’s locked them in. Suzy realises she never chose any of this. She wonders how she ended up here. After tonight, she might never find her way out.
This stark play, written in disrupted, non-chronological verse, reflects the lonely, monotonous, and exhausting life of a mother of three. As the minutes of the hot night pass, the action flicks back to when she worked in a chicken packing factory, met her Hans Vassily Kreuz, and how she never really wanted children. Her life now resembles a production line, as she keeps everyone and everything serviced, a life commented on throughout by a Chorus.
With a chilling ending, Suzy Storck is a stark comment of society’s expectations of motherhood and family. It was performed in this English translation to critical acclaim, at the Gate Theatre, London, in 2017.
