With 'Eve of Retirement' (A Comedy of the German Soul), Austrian author Thomas Bernhard (1931-1981) wrote what he himself considered his finest play in 1979. It is a pitch-black, grim, and at the same time hilarious comedy about a society still haunted by its far-right past.
In 'Eve of Retirement', Bernhard confronts postwar Germany’s impotence and hypocrisy in dealing with its Nazi past - its silence about guilt and responsibility. Through the disturbing far-right rhetoric of his rigid characters, he gives voice to his revulsion. Yet he also observes that we ourselves may not be much better.
Tom Dewispelaere's decision to stage this play is no coincidence. The direct trigger is the unsettling normalisation of a vocabulary and ideology that are direct heirs of the far-right extremism of the 1930s and 40s.
