Koltès recounts the last days of serial killer Roberto Zucco, who at the play’s opening has murdered his father, and will only go on to murder his mother, seemingly without reason. The newly escaped inmate continues to execute those who impede or annoy him in the slightest way, without guilt or second thought. However, Zucco is curiously non-violent most of the time. His good looks and innocent charm create an orbit onto which the empty people around him project their needs. Women are irresistibly drawn to him, including a teenage girl who forces her brother to sell her to a brothel in the hope of encountering Zucco again in the broken sections of Little Chicago.

In the second half of the play Koltès discards realism and begins to depict the world as seen through the lens of Zucco’s increasingly deteriorating sanity. In Zucco’s delusion, onlookers to one of his murders flippantly act as if they watch the tragedy on television. Zucco starts to suspect that all humans are capable of the sudden violence that he has found unleashed in himself.

By the end of the play, Zucco has taken on the qualities of both a spirit and a mythological hero. With a nod to Freud, Nietzsche, and Jung, this fearless inhuman being is finally struck down by an implacable heaven.

This play was first staged April 22, 1983 at the Bochum Theater. The play is constructed around Medea by Euripides, in Müllers’ opinion the first play dealing with colonization. The central character, Jason, is cast out into a landscape of his own creation; one of rotting corpses, barren fields, cavernous individuals and loneliness. His conquering spirit allows him to live amongst the rubble that he has created.

The first section of the play alternates between a sterile outpost community consisting of siphoned individuals and a world ravaged by war. The detatched, obsessive qualities of a present world share space with a scornful, passionate, destructive Medea of ancient Greece while Jason and his Argonauts watch as regimented house cleaners perform their tasks. Time does not abide by any coherent structure, actions and consequences occur simultaneously.

The second section plays out through Jason’s self-imposed nightmare. Technology has exceeded his understanding and is crashing around him, personal communication has evaporated, past evils have taken on human form and force their presence upon him, his body unravels into the theater of his death and spreads out into a holocaust.

In Müller’s words, Despoiled Shore, “presumes the catastrophes which mankind is working towards.” The play, written as a synthetic fragment much like Buchener’s Woyzeck, is absent of any stage directions and is open to countless interpretations, with that said, we would greatly appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you have concerning this play.

Tension, mind games, and personal politics in two East London apartments. An hour-long escapade into the unsettling world of Harold Pinter.

Three East London friends' relationships crumble amidst inexplicable Pinterian tension and power games. Len's personality droops towards psychosis as he tries to explore and subvert the nature of the universe. His two "pals" try to pull Len into their respective spheres of influence while largely ignoring his calls to admit the grisly truth.

Pete viciously searches for the "efficient" occupation in life amidst his unemployment, and Mark, an actor, tries to maintain his fragile ego. Len begins to talk about these two malcontents in relation to an imaginary pack of dwarves. The underestimated Len succeeds in playing the two against one another and achieving isolation for everyone involved.