Original Title: Raj bez fajrunta
Eden Without Closing Time brings together three plays written between 1996 and 1998. Placed in a literary interrelation, these Špišiæ plays function as a trilogy of sorts about weak individuals existing in the travesties of time. Having sprouted in the potato plot of the eternally promising Eden, these losers are susceptible to infections that tout their own importance. Although virtually cemented by bad experiences, Špišiæ’s heroes repeatedly cast off the innocence of misapprehension, as if it is their first time. And they are capable of playing out the most grotesque scenes in the ostensibly controlled course of their remote virtual destinies. That’s the way the female actors behave in foggy Electa-shock (Emilia at Night), with overdosed Austro-Hungarian poets on the front in Serbia (Kings of the End), or the guest-worker group which exorcises demons in the steamy Millennium night in New Orleans (Mama Luna).
Yet one more link exists between these three plays. All of them speak of the micro-world of the family, of the marginal laws of tragedy and farce that have for centuries smouldered and incinerated behind closed doors and drawn curtains. Eden Without Closing Time monitors the truth in voyeur fashion: bones snap with more intensity inside the small family dictatorships than in the abattoirs of the world’s historical hysteria.