August Strindberg - Hemsöborna (Stockholms stadsteater)

Han kom som ett yrväder en aprilafton och hade ett Höganäskrus i en svångrem om halsen. (He arrived like a whirlwind an evening in April and had a Höganäs jug in a belt around his neck.)

~ August Strindberg, Hemsöborna

The quote above is probably one of the most famous of all introductory sentences in Swedish literature. It is taken from August Strindbergs book Hemsöborna which was first published as a novel in 1887. Strindberg spent a couple of summers at Kymmendö in the Stockholm archipelago. The inhabitants on that island took the novel personally and fobid Strindberg to return there because of it. I went to see a theatre version of the novel, directed by Stefan Metz at Stockholms stadsteater yesterday

The cast of Hemsöborna. Photo: Sören Vilks

The plot revolves around the inhabitant at a farm at the island Hemsö in the archipelago outside of Stockholm. The farm is run by the widow Flod (often called madam or moster [aunt]). Her son Gusten prefers to be out on the sea hunting and the farm decays, so she sends out for help and Carlsson is hired as a farmhand to help and he is the one arriving as a whirlwind an evening in April. 

Ann Petrén as Madam Flod.
Photo: Sören Vilks

Carlsson knows a lot about farming, but nothing about the sea, but with his help the farm prosper and everyone seems to like him quite well (in the case of Madam Flod a little too well...), but Gusten remains sceptical. Carlsson rents out one of the houses to summer guests. They have a maid he falls in love with, but after hearing Madam Flod proclaiming her love for him and realising he would get his own farm, he marries her.

The marriage, however, changes Carlsson and he goes from energetic farm to greedy entrepreneur. This theme is something it has in common with Chekhov's The Chery Orchard which I saw in Göteborg last week. Hemsöborna treats it far better though! The Cherry Orchard tried too hard to place the plot into a modern setting, it did not work because it felt too much like it was forcing political standpoints down in your throat and a classical play was added sort of like an afterthought. Hemsöborna, however, sticks quite well to the original plot and because it does, it manages to portray how power and money can corrupt a man.

The book

All the actors (even the often dancing extras) were very good. I am a big fan of Ann Petrén who played Madam Flod since long before this and she was really amazing here as well, but Claes Malmberg worked very well as Carlsson as well.

In The Cherry Orchard I was very confused by the scenery. With the actors coming out of boxes and trees in the background that was not even cherry trees and nothing about it really added up to what the characters were saying.

The scenography of Hemsöborna was very simple but extremely effective. It was all made up of corrugated fiberboards covering the entire stage, screen which showed what I think was Strindberg's own paintings and with sticks being used as waves, tree branches and fishing-rods. However the scenography also turned out to be extremely effective. The last scene is about Gusten and Carlsson together with the farmhands Rundqvist and Norman being out on the ice in a snow storm and the ice starts to break up into ice floes. The rest of the cast tore off those pieces of corrugated fiberboard pretty much piece by piece and it worked very well.

So to sum it all up: while the Göteborg theatre production of The Cherry Orchard (which was the one production I was looking forward to) was one of my probably worst theatre experiences ever, Hemsöborna (which was an unexpected christmas gift) turned out to be one of my best theatre experiences ever (Not the best. That is still Othello at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.) and it restored my faith in the theatre that got torn a bit last weekend.





The photos, besides the first and the last ones, was borrowed from here. Photographer: Sören Vilks

Karin Boye - Kallocain

I have understood that recent events in the world has made George Orwell's dystopian book 1984 popular again. I definitely see the reason to compare it to the world of today, but I want to tell you about a Swedish book that is not so famous, even though it has been translated to other languages than Swedish. It is called Kallocain and was the last book written by Karin Boye who commited suicide only months after it was published in 1940.

The book is about the chemist Leo Kall who tells the story of his life. He invented a truth serum called kallocain for the totalitarian Världstaten (World State) which controls everything in its citizens lives. The kallocain gives the state a way to control people's inner thoughts as well. However, listening to them has a side effect on Leo himself. He starts to question the teaching and the propaganda of Världstaten.

Considering it was published in 1940, it is easy to see that Boye mainly got her inspiration from the situation in contemporary Germany and Russia where the state required everything from the individual. The citizens should be submissive and obey every whim from the regime. Just like the regimes in Germany and Russia, Världsstaten also stalks, tortures and kills disobediant citizens. Feelings (especially of the more empathetic nature), humanism and free thoughts needs to be supressed totally and everyone needs to make huge sacrifices in the name of the state (such as giving up your own children to the state!) without blinking. The book also uses a lot of military terms, so you from the very beginning realise that the regime is into warfare. Everyone wears uniforms (special ones for every occasion) and the children are taught to play war from a very young age (They even uses explosives and has their own guns!). I also cannot help thinking Karin Boye wanted to criticise the view of science at the time. I do believe that science is good and things need to be scientific, but during that time, it was from time to time misused to devastating purposes.

Boye's language is very austere, but the pace of the story is rather hectic. It is easy to read, but you still need to stay with it all the time. It is a very thought-provoking book that unfortunately is still relevant today. While Orwell's future is in the past (1984), Kallocain is set in today's present (the 21st century), something that, to me, makes it a bit scary based on the current political situation we see througout the world.

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol

There is a lot to say about the christmas traditions and their history and I could spend this Christmas Eve post on talking about how the Scandinavian languages have word for Christmas that derive from one of Odin's many names Jólnir. How the earliest known celebration of the birth of Jesus in the Coptic church in Egypt in the 3rd century AD was in the beginning of May and how the celebration was moved to it's current place in December due to Pagan celebrations of the winter solstice, when Christianity gained power in the Roman Empire.

I could also talk about weird Swedish traditions like eating the pagan pig Särimner every christmas. Or that we are all watching the Disney christmas special originally called From all of us, but which we call Kalle Anka (Donald Duck) at three o'clock every Christmas Eve. Or what a total uproar it becomes if Disney or SVT tries changing even one second of that show...

But I am not going to do so. This because I find it better and more important nowadays to talk about Charles Dickens's classical book A Christmas Carol. The book was published in 1843 but its message is still important to reflect upon.

A Christmas Carol tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy and selfish buisness man.

Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips bue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry ching. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days, and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.

Scrooge's selfishness is clear in the description of him in the first stave (as the chapters are called in the book. An influence from the music world like the title of the novella itself also is.). He does not care for anyone or anything and is too trapped in himself that not even the weather can affect him. His cold inner nature is also clearly demonstrated by his outer one. He is mean and uncaring to everyone.

One Christmas night, he is visited by the ghost of his 7-years-dead buisness partner Jacob Marley. Marley tells him that he will be visited by three ghosts that will try to make him change his ways so he will not be doomed to haunt around the world regretting his choice not to care about others after death like himself.

'Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask', said Scrooge looking intently at the Spirit's robe, 'but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?'
'It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it', was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. 'Look here!'
From the foldings of its robe it brought two children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
'O man! look here! Look, look down here!' exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched thm with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared outo menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half as horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more.
'They are Man's' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. (---)' 

The three ghosts turns out to be: The ghost of Christmas past, The ghost of Christmas present and The ghost of Christmas yet to come. They have a different lesson to teach Scrooge about the importance of self-reflection, of empathy and compassion and of long-term thinking. In a world where people strives to live in the present, not reflecting on memories of the past nor of what consequences their action will have on the future, A Christmas Carol is just as an important lesson today, when the boy and girl accompanying The ghost of Christmas present grows ever stronger and when the sake of goodness, empathy and compassion are seen as something naive and bad. But there is hope. Like Scrooge, one always deserves a second chance to correct ones way of living.


God Jul! Merry Christmas!