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Suzy Storck
Another unbearably hot evening. 8:54pm. Suzy Storck sits by the window on this hot and airless night, waiting for her husband to come home. Upstairs she can hear her children, yelling and clamouring at their bedroom door. She's locked them in. Suzy realises she never chose any of this. She wonders how she ended up here. After tonight, she might never find her way out.
This stark play, written in disrupted, non-chronological verse, reflects the lonely, monotonous, and exhausting life of a mother of three. As the minutes of the hot night pass, the action flicks back to when she worked in a chicken packing factory, met her Hans Vassily Kreuz, and how she never really wanted children. Her life now resembles a production line, as she keeps everyone and everything serviced, a life commented on throughout by a Chorus.
With a chilling ending, Suzy Storck is a stark comment of society's expectations of motherhood and family. It was performed in this English translation to critical acclaim, at the Gate Theatre, London, in 2017.
This stark play, written in disrupted, non-chronological verse, reflects the lonely, monotonous, and exhausting life of a mother of three. As the minutes of the hot night pass, the action flicks back to when she worked in a chicken packing factory, met her Hans Vassily Kreuz, and how she never really wanted children. Her life now resembles a production line, as she keeps everyone and everything serviced, a life commented on throughout by a Chorus.
With a chilling ending, Suzy Storck is a stark comment of society's expectations of motherhood and family. It was performed in this English translation to critical acclaim, at the Gate Theatre, London, in 2017.
- GenresPlays
88 pages, Paperback
Published October 26, 2017
16 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 25, 2021
french feminist - like The Awakening by Kat Chopin
I know what I said last time about not liking hopeless stories, and this may be the exception. Maybe.
The function of the chorus is what strikes me most. The introduction acts out the Greek chorus trope in a postmodern way, and even Suzy acts as an almost member of the chorus. I almost wonder if the chorus is necessary if Suzy explains so much of her inner life herself, though the chorus is what keeps me on board throughout the entirety of the play, so I’m conflicted. Perhaps what keeps the play working is the consistency of the chorus. It adds a level of surrealism (though this doesn’t feel like quite the right word) that is necessary for digesting so much heavy material in such an ‘in-your-face’ explanatory manner.
In discussing the event of the play, I would argue that the event in Suzy Stork is the discovery that she has left the baby outside in the heat. Specifically, I do not think the event is Suzy’s act of leaving out the baby, but the discovery of this and its implications, since this conflict only begins once Hans and the mother are involved.
I wonder if this play was focused on a different character if our sympathies would be with them, or if the sympathy in the play must lie with Suzy despite her horrible negligence and abuse toward her children and herself. Perhaps we only sympathize with Suzy because of the context and conversation around feminism that has risen to the surface really only recently (in the grand scheme of history). Suzy requires care and help that she is not getting from anyone in her life: she clearly has postpartum depression, she is abused by her mother, she is gaslit by her husband, she is ignored and coerced, she is born into a system that does not favour her class, gender, or desires. When she attempts to take initiative, she is shut down and coerced into the mainstream narrative of what should be (mainly childrearing).
Suzy’s negligent violence toward her children serves as an act of rebellion against this mainstream narrative, mostly out of a desperation. It is a last resort because no one else listens to her. It reminds me of Edna Pontillier’s act of rebellion in Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening, in which Edna drowns herself as a (passive) act of rebellion and freedom from what Suzy might call “THE WAY THE NATURE OF THINGS AROUND ME [women] IS ORGANIZED” (epilogue, Suzy Stork). Both Edna and Suzy’s rebellion is passive–letting someone die as a result of blatant negligence, whether that be not swimming or not bringing the child inside. This passive form of rebellion I believe is a very feminine rebellion. Since women are not heard, the only way to act is to not. Suzy is a perfect example of this. She does not act at all after her effort to get a job is shut down. After this, she does nothing and acts not.
To me, this play begs some main questions:
1. Is Suzy a sympathetic character? Is she intended to be perceived as one?
2. What is the role of the Chorus? Is it effective?
3. What is the point of this play? Is it elucidative, educational, argumentative, etc?
I know what I said last time about not liking hopeless stories, and this may be the exception. Maybe.
The function of the chorus is what strikes me most. The introduction acts out the Greek chorus trope in a postmodern way, and even Suzy acts as an almost member of the chorus. I almost wonder if the chorus is necessary if Suzy explains so much of her inner life herself, though the chorus is what keeps me on board throughout the entirety of the play, so I’m conflicted. Perhaps what keeps the play working is the consistency of the chorus. It adds a level of surrealism (though this doesn’t feel like quite the right word) that is necessary for digesting so much heavy material in such an ‘in-your-face’ explanatory manner.
In discussing the event of the play, I would argue that the event in Suzy Stork is the discovery that she has left the baby outside in the heat. Specifically, I do not think the event is Suzy’s act of leaving out the baby, but the discovery of this and its implications, since this conflict only begins once Hans and the mother are involved.
I wonder if this play was focused on a different character if our sympathies would be with them, or if the sympathy in the play must lie with Suzy despite her horrible negligence and abuse toward her children and herself. Perhaps we only sympathize with Suzy because of the context and conversation around feminism that has risen to the surface really only recently (in the grand scheme of history). Suzy requires care and help that she is not getting from anyone in her life: she clearly has postpartum depression, she is abused by her mother, she is gaslit by her husband, she is ignored and coerced, she is born into a system that does not favour her class, gender, or desires. When she attempts to take initiative, she is shut down and coerced into the mainstream narrative of what should be (mainly childrearing).
Suzy’s negligent violence toward her children serves as an act of rebellion against this mainstream narrative, mostly out of a desperation. It is a last resort because no one else listens to her. It reminds me of Edna Pontillier’s act of rebellion in Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening, in which Edna drowns herself as a (passive) act of rebellion and freedom from what Suzy might call “THE WAY THE NATURE OF THINGS AROUND ME [women] IS ORGANIZED” (epilogue, Suzy Stork). Both Edna and Suzy’s rebellion is passive–letting someone die as a result of blatant negligence, whether that be not swimming or not bringing the child inside. This passive form of rebellion I believe is a very feminine rebellion. Since women are not heard, the only way to act is to not. Suzy is a perfect example of this. She does not act at all after her effort to get a job is shut down. After this, she does nothing and acts not.
To me, this play begs some main questions:
1. Is Suzy a sympathetic character? Is she intended to be perceived as one?
2. What is the role of the Chorus? Is it effective?
3. What is the point of this play? Is it elucidative, educational, argumentative, etc?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 3, 2020
Suzy’s landscape is bleak; day in, day out: morning, noon and night. As she reminisces on what she could have made of her little life, she ruminates over the reality of her domestic warfare and subsequently drowns in it. Confined within the walls of what others would have for her, she tries to elevate in the simplest of ways yet escapes in the darkest of ways. A reminder to a society that when a woman says she wants no children, to believe her.
January 22, 2024
Vraiment bien. J'ai beaucoup beaucoup aimé l'écriture, que je connaissais déjà un peu. Le personnage de Suzy m'a beaucoup plu, sa violence malgré elle, ses regrets. Quelle tristesse ce système
November 12, 2025
3,25 aller
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews