How The Life Of Mister Grey Ended

How The Life Of Mister Grey Ended is a the second play by Lovian artist Jonathan Frum. Frum has written, directed and funded the production which was finished in 1991. The Life Of Mister Grey is Frum's most existentialist play and is monologue about an accountant that gets involved in a criminal investigation. The play focuses on corruption in legal institutions and themes as guilt, punishment and liberty. Frum performed the monologue himself for a long time but ever since 2005 he left the stage. The play was a successful but never reached the same popularity or media attention as his other productions.

Synopsis

 * WARNING: THE FOLLOWING EXTRACT CONTAINS SOME DESCRIPTIONS OF CRUEL ACTS. DO NOT READ IT IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED OR SHOCKED.

The opening scene shows a man waking up in his hotel room. He walks up to the window and as he opens it he is shot in the chest. The man falls to the floor and remains motionless. Soon after the woman who he had been sleeping with in the hotel room, goes to the bathroom (off stage) where she seems to be taking a shower. It is only when she walks back into the bedroom that she notices her husband is lying on the floor, dead. She panics and tries to reach the hotel reception by telephone. The lines are dead, though. She is also prevented form leaving the room as the door is stuck. Desperate, she goes to her dead husband and cries at his body.

After an unspecified period of time, someone is shouting in the hallway. The woman runs to the door and yells for help. The man in the hallway manages to open the hotel room door and rushes in, clearly mastered by fear. He commands the woman to help him barricade the door - making no sense at all in his explanation. The only thing we can make up is that the man is a soldier and that "it isn't safe to leave the room." The woman and the soldier have a conversation about where the dead body comes from and what to do next. Both questions remain unanswered. After the two get into a fight, the soldier brutally rapes the woman and then leaves the room trough the window. For the second time, the woman is left crying on the floor, near her husband's body.

When the soldier comes back (through the window) he carries a dead baby with him, crying over how he couldn't save him and the baby's mother. Again, the soldier is unable to tell anything about what or who the baby had to be saved from. The woman tries to comfort the soldier and the two have sex again, this time with mutual consent. After a new dialogue concerning dreams from the past, the soldier explains to the woman how they will have to eat her husband and the baby, lacking a proper source of food. He has no idea about what to do when they will be "out of improper food". The two now sit on the floor together, seeking each others warmth. The soldier tells the woman in an almost meaningless way he has shot her husband and that he came to seek her because he felt guilty. The woman simply replies: "I knew that."