Press Quotes
“THE DANUBE and MUD have paved the way for a new language of dramatic realism.” —Bonnie Marranca, Theaterwritings
“THE DANUBE [is] one of the most startlingly original and devastating things I can ever remember seeing on a stage.” — Michael Feingold, Village Voice
“THE DANUBE is a play that mysteriously, yet naturally, makes the poetry of the living theater an experience of great power … it’s told, without intermission, in a series of short scenes of very simple, very beautiful language. Initially, it’s an amusing little love story, accompanied by schmaltzy accordion and gypsy violin, in which Paul, a young American, meets and falls in love with Eve, a young woman of Budapest. Their courtship, conducted in the monosyllabic sentences of an English-Hungarian conversation course, is charming, old-fashioned. Then, the romance becomes diseased. Eve suddenly faints at a restaurant; Paul has a seizure after their lovemaking; he is sent to a hospital; their skin breaks out in evil-looking sores; their cozy world of family and friends collapses … THE DANUBE makes graphically clear that the gradual death choking its characters is the result of a nuclear explosion and pollution. But, for Fornés, the shattering of this secure, simple life also could be the result of any terrifying element in a contemporary world filled with the forces of destruction. None of this is specifically stated, however. The cheerful mood of the love story is established through a sweet, smiling simplicity, expressed in the direct language of the conversation lesson that is played on a recording. The dread effects of the ensuing disaster are shown vividly in the dark glasses that the characters put on, in the stained soldier’s uniform that Paul wears, in the eternity that it takes an old man to lift a small cup of coffee to his lips, and in the stringy bit of slime that he picks from the cup.” —Richard Christiansen, The Chicago Tribune