Most importantly: There is plenty to drink. Natalie Baudy establishes this in a stage direction at the very beginning of her play under the influence. A recommendation perfectly suited to the tastes of Ems, Anja, and Lieselott—the play’s three protagonists, each reflecting a different generation of women. As neighbors, they live wall to wall in a gray apartment block, and yet hardly know one another. In under the influence, they fling open their doors, meet in the corridor, and look up through the light well at the same sky. It rains blood. The women are barely surprised. Today blood, before that worms, earlier worn-out sports socks; how it rains bad breath, only heaven knows, though they have experienced that as well.

The New Normal

Struck by the same visitations, Ems, Anja, and Lieselott find a sense of community in this corridor. In one of the apartments (there is plenty to drink), they remember their lives before the plagues: carefree days, music, intoxicating nights that lasted until dawn, flirting, and the walk home one would rather have taken alone but says nothing because it is too exhausting and easier to simply undress. They remember their first times: Ems with Miro and vodka-orange, Lieselott with her future husband Ingmar after a shot of Korn, Anja with someone or other and a bottle of Lambrusco.

While the three women barricade themselves against the plagues, a fourth woman cleans up behind them: Dionysos. Daughter of Zeus, goddess of intoxication, It-girl of antiquity, now with a history of withdrawal. Having fallen far, all the way down to earth, she is reorganizing her life as the building’s caretaker, soaking up the rain of blood with fluffy towels and scraping dead frogs from the tiles. She has remedies for every plague—mud, hail, fear of the future, the swing to the right; only exhaustion never entirely disappears.

Dionysos has left the great intoxication behind. In under the influence, however, it is everywhere. Ems stages it on social media—with a glass in hand, she reads the biographies of famous women and lives off the encouragement of her followers. For Anja, it is part of the system: long days at the office, major decisions, important men having a whiskey afterward—while she always takes one more, cause as a woman, you always have to do better to make it count. And the widow Lieselott remembers a generation for whom alcohol was simply functional: a means of getting through the day. In different ways, all three live within roles and routines, settled into systems, whether chosen or not.

In intoxication, the women are connected. Three lives merge into a single current of memories, confessions, raspberry schnaps, and sparkling wine. Most important of all is that there is plenty to drink. But what happens when nothing is left?