A comedy by Jean-Pierre Martinez
English translation by the author
7 actors : 1M/6W, 2M/5W, 3M/4W, 4M/3W
8 actors : 1M/7W, 2M/6W, 3M/5W, 4M/4W, 5M/3W
9 actors : 2M/7W, 3M/6W, 4M/5W, 5M/4W, 6M/3W
10 actors : 2M/8W, 3M/7W, 4M/6W, 5M/5W, 6M/4W, 7M/3W
Following a hearse accident, the arrival in a typical French café of a coffin, which turns out to contain a winning lottery ticket, provides the pretext for a highly spirited comedy.
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The songs from the play. Lyrics and music Jean-Pierre Martinez. These songs may be used as part of a stage production, simple request to the author and without any additional fees. The audio file is available upon request, subject to prior authorization from the author for the use of the play’s text.
The Café as a Theatre of Life
At the Café des Sports, a popular bar opposite the cemetery, an accident involving a van and a hearse forces two undertakers to leave Marcel’s coffin temporarily in the kitchen. At the same time, news breaks that a winning lottery ticket worth 75 million euros was sold in the café. When everyone convinces themselves that the deceased may have been the lucky winner, funeral concerns quickly give way to a treasure hunt.
The play is built around a highly precise ensemble mechanism. Characters are constantly coming and going, while objects circulate, disappear or change hands: a mobile phone, keys, a pregnancy test, a lottery ticket. The coffin becomes the centre of this ceaseless movement and eventually ends up containing everything the living manage to misplace. Misunderstandings, false leads and reversals pile up until the café becomes a genuine machine for generating chaos.
The bar also functions as a miniature social theatre. Everyone brings with them their frustrations, secrets and dreams of escape: finding love, becoming a writer, leaving their job or suddenly becoming rich. The lottery ticket crystallises the hope of escaping an ordinary existence overnight. But chance has no sense of justice: wealth may fall to someone who does not need it, arrive too late, or pass from hand to hand without anyone knowing who it truly belongs to.
The black humour strips death of its solemnity without denying its presence. In this café located between the town and the cemetery, funerals, love affairs, newspaper stories and rounds of calvados all belong to the same flow of life. The coffin becomes a counter and the funeral ceremony turns into a celebration. By having the dead man himself ask for one last drink, the play ultimately reminds us that life is a lottery whose winning number no one can know in advance.
