Europe. Big word. Big theme. It was used by David Greig as the title of his 1994 play about frontiers in the age of mass migration. The setting is a railway station in eastern Europe and it opens like a kids’ TV show with each character entering and doing something ‘typical’. Everyone is either good or bad. The stationmaster is a bullying xenophobe. His deputy, Adele, is a meek, well-meaning housewife unhappily married to a dim, angry factory worker whose unemployed mates are as stupid as he is, apart from one who wants to go travelling and another who makes stacks of evil cash out of smuggling.
Two migrants arrive, father and daughter. The father is a sublimely intelligent amateur philosopher with a fluffy grey beard and a habit of speaking in epigrams. His beautiful low-pitched voice makes him sound like Leonard Cohen singing a puppy to sleep. The daughter is a cool, elegant beauty who mistrusts everyone she meets.
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