In his imprisonment, the half-mad Franz von Gerlach conceived a grandiose undertaking - to tell about the affairs of people of the 20th century for those who will live in the thirtieth century; as he believes, there will no longer be people (humanity will disappear), but... crabs. The solemn and dark “monologues to the crabs,” which Franz persistently perfects, again and again rewriting onto magnetic tape, compositionally frame his entire story - they sound in the play at the first appearance of Franz and then in the finale, already on an empty stage, after his suicide. These desperately bitter “testimonies” contain the entire contradictory personality of Franz: the pain of conscience, burdened with the burden of responsibility for the troubles and crimes of the century, and at the same time the fear of an upset consciousness to leave the circle of his own chimeras.

S. Zenkin