About the work
“Glücklich die Glücklichen” is based on the novel “Heureux les heureux” by the French writer Yasmina Reza, published by Flammarion in 2013; the German translation by Frank Heibert and Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel appeared from Hanser in 2014. The novel consists of monologues by various Parisian characters who shed light on one another. Oliver Reese wrote a stage version, which he premiered on 11 September 2026 at the Neues Haus of the Berliner Ensemble, where five actors play twelve roles.
Plot
It opens with the married couple Robert and Odile Toscano, whose quarrel at a supermarket cheese counter escalates and lays bare both rage and unexpected tenderness. From there the stories branch out into a network of couples, singles and families of the Parisian middle class, linked by marriages, affairs, friendships and work. Each character speaks from their own perspective about love, infidelity, ambition and family conflict, among them a couple whose son believes he is Céline Dion and an oncologist in search of fleeting encounters. Together the individual voices form a bitterly comic panorama of the gap between hoped-for and lived happiness.
Cultural significance
The novel won the Prix littéraire du Monde and a novel prize awarded by the magazine Marie Claire in 2013; it was translated into English in 2015 as “Happy Are the Happy”. German critics were divided between praise for its sharp yet tender moments and objections to its fragmented perspectives.