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Robert Toscano is out shopping with his wife Odile at the supermarket for the weekend and is on the verge of losing his temper because he and his wife can't agree on a particular type of cheese, Morbier. In this brief scene from Yasmina Reza's episodic novel "Happy Are the Happy" ("Heureux les heureux"), a banal argument about cheese unfolds into the existential drama of a marriage.

Like few other contemporary authors, Yasmina Reza succeeds in exposing the fractures of a supposedly carefree, affluent society. With sober irony and her characteristic dark humor, she creates a wide-ranging panorama of everyday relationships. The individual snapshots of couples of all kinds are like "short cuts" that combine to form a whole reflecting the present. Stories are carefully interwoven, focusing on people who have given up trying to maintain a bourgeois facade: whether because everyday life brings disillusionment, family life leads to estrangement, or growing old makes them grumpy and lonely. In these self-revelations, Yasmina Reza explores the secret to a successful life without losing her sense of humor.

Director Mira Stadler brings this touching and, despite its unflinching honesty, also very funny novel to the stage of the Kammerspiele for the first time.

(Source: josefstadt.org)