Theater #1 of 2019:
Faust (the sequel)
This play by Jens Ohlin and Hannes Meidal get's five creepy demon poodles of five!
- You are a poodle
- Mhmm.
- But you're talking. Now you're talking. No, you're not a poodle. I can see it clearly. You're in disguise.
- Yes, of course I am. This is a disguise.
- But why are you disguised as a poodle?
- /A poodle obeys, as do all dogs, every wave and hint from the one in charge. It guards you, even when its eyes are closed, but remember: most of it is training./I bought this ticket during my lunch break on Black Friday, when I saw that the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) had a one-day 50% off sale for January tix, and figured "huh 2 hours of Faust on the small stage can't be entirely pointless, so why not". I had virtually no idea what it was about until today, when I double-checked the time and realized it was some sort of sequel... and then it turned out AMAZING!
It was a very strong performance by just about everyone - Thérèse Brunnader was Wagner, the heir to Faust's music/arts 'house', and she was great. Pathetic, impressive, scary, honest and lying.... several monologues, and she carried the stage so well! Per Mattson was the poodle a.k.a. Mephisto, and while his role was mostly deadpan (+a bit of microphone echo), he was still super duper creepy. Everyone saw him, at least some of the time, as a poodle, and just petted him and went "goochiewoochie whose a good doggie?" while he sat there and
stared at us with those huge unblinking eyes (painted on his eyelids so yeah). Really unpleasant to see irl.
This picture can't convey half the creepyness. We then had two sychophantic other house members plus a young man, Zeitblom, who came back during the multiple years the play covered, and who mirrored the young Wagner begging Faust to be let in; she in turn mirrored the old Faust more and more. In the first visit, she wink-nudged to us in the audience and repeated the words we'd been told Faust told her (go find your true center and your own music... break the rules and laws... go into your cellar!). The second time she unconsciously fell into his pattern of acting, I think, and was upset when Zeitblom referred her secrets that he had seen in her opera. The third time, the third time was the big twist, but first we got what I feel is implied to mirror the sexual abuse that happened between Faust and Gretchen and/or other young women. Really well done, btw, since as a part of it he fellated her fingers/hand and it got the point across without being too "ugh I dnw to see naked actors" (also it was much more gross than sexy, which I think is good in this case).
Talking about dark secrets though, there's one more character on stage in this place, and it was the masterfully masked and costumed Nepomuk (Frida Österberg)! She was the daughter of Faust and Gretchen, locked away in the cellar beneath the house, her suffering a well from which Faust could bring out genius (as per the alluded to deal with the devil). When she came out on stage, her
eyes covered with skin-looking fabric and on big goat-legged stilts, screaming in a high-pitched voice it was legit the SCARIEST fukkin thing I've ever seen in a theater performance and I've seen both zombies, vampires and murderers. It was just so unexpected, so distressing and at the same time not too OTT, because it took a while to gather all the details as she came out, fumbling for support.
Nepomuk was terrifying and very pitiful.
Wagner and the Poodle were on stage too, and both their reactions were pitch-perfect. To add to more amazing, Österberg turned out to be an opera singer, so the unearthly singing we'd heard from the loudspeakers and been hinted at was Gretchen's 'lost voice' somehow, she could perform live and just - soooo gooood.
Wagner tries to escape responsibility, to accept responsibility, to free herself from Wagner's fate and engage the evil while not damning herself. The play follows a very clear curve of genius,its ascent and descent, yet has some intriguing twists.
I'd almost call this a red box, lol, except there was some really advanced light and sound magic going on, so a bit beyond that. But a stark stage, with the red curtain used as an effective part of the scenery, and a red couch the main prop. And Nepomuk's goat stilts.
The blurb on the website goes: "en ny Faust – en mardrömslabyrint på versfötter, om viljan att lysa upp bland livets och konstens skuggor, se sitt eget ansvar i ögonen och utrota ondskan, en gång för alla"
A new Faust - a nightmare labyrinth on poetrical feet*, about the will to bring a light among the shadows of life and art, to see your own responsibility in the eye and exterminate evil once and for all".
And.... yeah, that managed to be an exact translation of what the play is about, what the play IS and how it feels to watch it.
Uhm, if you're in Stockholm on like the one day in February when it's not sold out, do go and see it. But you probably aren't, so you can see some more
pictures on my Tumblr (while it's still there).
Just. Wow, strong experience. Gorgeous in parts, funny, very engaging and seriously unnerving too. It managed to tie back to a classic and comment on the modern discourse without dropping too time-specific quotes and be its own thing. Good job, Dramaten.
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hungarian_musicals
If you are interested in what I am reading, I'm pretty good at listing it on Goodreads (though not at all good at reviewing, whoops). I'm drcalvin there too, and follow back everyone who introduces themselves. My main interests are fantasy, SF, urban fantasy, manga, indie comics. Especially interested in reading LGBT+ stories in all the named genres and media types.
