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| Ioan Ardelean and Alexandra Cohen Spiegler Photo By Yann Bean |
There’s nothing wrong with
Norway Plays: Drama Beyond Ibsen that could not be cured with a revised title,
something like Those Wild and Crazy Norwegians, perhaps.
So, let this serve as notice
that if you are seeking an intellectual evening exploring the darkness of the
soul or absorbing diatribes about individual rights, you are heading out to the
wrong venue.
Instead, what you will see is
a highly entertaining pair of one-acts by contemporary Norwegian playwrights. The
first, The Returning, is a funny and quirky modern-day fairy tale by Fredrik
Brattbert. The second, More, is a surrealistic and quirky play by Maria Tryti Vennerød. Both boast outstanding
performances by their respective casts as well as excellent directing (Henning
Hegland helms the first; Joan Kane does the honors on the second).
Even before The Returning
begins, you might very well be lulled into believing you truly are in Ibsen
territory, or possibly that of Strindberg or Chekhov. The silence is disturbed only by the ticking
and occasional chiming of a mantel clock—a sad and lonely sound. As the play
opens, you see a woman sitting on the sofa, knitting, while a man dressed in a
bathrobe stands apart from her, seemingly staring into space. You get a sense of a pair of lost souls who
are no longer able to connect with one another.
She invites him to sit next to her; he demurs, muttering something about
a lost dog. This is an unhappy couple,
you think.
And then we learn they have
lost their only child, a teenage boy who simply disappeared one day while on a
skiing trip.
OK. Did I mention that The Returning is funny and
quirky? Since the plot hangs on a string
of events related to the missing son, I will try to avoid being a spoiler
here. Let me just say this: if Stephen
King had written Pet Sematery with a sense of its comic possibilities, he might
have come up with something like The Returning.
The cast of three, Ingrid
Kullberg-Bendz, Andrew Langton, and Kristoffer Tonning, are delightful—with Mr.
Tonning a real charmer as the adorable but irritating teenager, Gustav. It’s a lot of fun to watch the shift in the
actors’ tone and style as the play moves from dark to light to off-the-wall
wacky.
Oh, and keep an eye on the
knitting, which adds a touch of its own sublime weirdness to the unfolding
events.
The second play in the
twosome, More, eschews Ibsen for Kafka, and takes the notion of “media circus”
to new and surrealistic heights. It is
so very difficult to successfully pull off absurdist theater without tumbling inappropriately
into burlesque or slapstick comedy. So
truly Ms. Vennerød deserves high praise for this most excellent juggling act, in which the
murder of a teenage girl, Benedickte (Skyler Volpe), by her best friend Ida (Christina
Toth) serves as fodder for two television reporters/media personalities
(gloriously portrayed by Alexandra Cohen Spiegler and Ioan Ardelean). The pair put pressure on the police to help
them sell the killing as “a lesbian crime of passion” and then prod their
audience: “Stupid? Evil?
Or Mean? Call in and vote!”
The truth, of course, is far
more complicated—but, hey, this is the world of sound bites, instant causes célèbres, and reality TV, so who cares
about actual reality?
As was true of The Returning,
the cast of More is first-rate, and includes—in addition to the ones I have
already mentioned--Erik Schjerven and Chevy Kaeo Martinez as a pair of
detectives caught up in the media blitz.
Special notice must be given to Shannon Stowe’s well-choreographed
movement that flows through the production and melds acting with performance
art.
Thanks, Norway, for sharing
these works by two of your rising stars.
Thanks, too, to Ego Actus and Scandinavian American Theater Company for
presenting Norway Plays: Drama Beyond
Ibsen, which you can catch until December 1 at Theater For The New City.
Now, about that title…
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