About the work
State of the Union is a two-hander by the British writer Nick Hornby about a marriage in crisis. Hornby first wrote the dialogues for a ten-part short-form series directed by Stephen Frears with Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd, broadcast on Sundance TV and the BBC in 2019; they were published as a book the same year and in German in 2020 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch as “Keiner hat gesagt, dass du ausziehen sollst”. The stage version in Ingo Herzke's translation is handled by Rowohlt Theater Verlag; Jonas Weber directed its German-language premiere at Theater Oberhausen on 14 October 2022.
Plot
Louise, a doctor, and Tom, an out-of-work music journalist, have been married for many years and are living apart after Louise's affair. Before each of their weekly couples therapy sessions they meet in a pub across the road from the practice and negotiate what should be raised inside and what had better stay unsaid. In ten short scenes they trade barbs, accusations and old grievances, and in the process also rediscover what once brought them together.
Cultural significance
The series won the 2019 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series, and Pike and O'Dowd also received Emmys; the German book edition was reviewed mostly favourably by FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Deutschlandfunk Kultur, among others. Since 2022 the play has been staged at many German-speaking theatres, for example in Oberhausen, Göttingen, Wilhelmshaven, Bielefeld and at Vienna's Volkstheater.