It is a station drama in ten scenes and follows a woman, Lotte, who travels through Germany and seeks human connections, but is unsuccessful as every person she encounters is locked into his own world [citation needed].
It premiered on 8 December 1978 at the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer in West Berlin, directed by Peter Stein and starring Edith Clever.
[4] The play has also been titled Great and Small, as was the case for a 1983 British production which starred Glenda Jackson.
"[7] Mel Gussow of The New York Times described the play in 1983 as "theoretically tantalizing, more interesting to contemplate than to experience and less adventurous than works by Mr. Strauss's peers such as Peter Handke and Franz Xaver Kroetz."
Tim Auld wrote in The Daily Telegraph that the play is "about as bleak a two and three quarter hours as you're likely to while away in the theatre", but that "it does, however, offer that rarest of things in modern drama: a virtuoso role for a lead actress, the main character, Lotte, being on stage for nearly every second of the performance".