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Where:
Trøndelag Theater, lead stage director
Director:
Maren E. Bjørseth
From:
By Simon Stranger, dramatized by Anne Birgitte Holtan
With:
Mira Dyrnes Askelund, Maria Omarsdottir Austgulen, Hildegunn Eggen, Ida Göransson, Kenneth Homstad, Duc Mai-The, Mats Moe, Hans Petter Nilsen
«Very strong at best, but uneven»
See all reviews
The village where Rinnan and his gang ran their businesses, with the basement where they tortured their victims.
There is hardly a clear picture of the aftermath of all the stories of war and extermination: when the nightmare ends, those who finally won must take over the battle zone and make it their own. Surviving was winning. But such victories are never priced.
Trondheim Home
The villa was located in Trondheim and now the Trøndelag Theater has brought the story home. On the main stage, they staged a dramatization of Stranger’s novel. The performance begins with the ensemble of eight gathered around a grand piano. They recite the first phrase of the book and then sing a Bulgarian folk melody.
While the lyrics are strangely flat, the song hits with emotional power.
And so the performance continues: it is as if half of the scenes hit hard and intense, while the other half did not fully surrender; the direction gives some depth and strength, others are invented.
The reason lies in the direction of the address, rather than the game: the address is deliberately stylized and expressive. But stylization is not a quality in itself. If you want to be successful, you must highlight the core of the story. And here the director is more successful when he does not try so hard. So the images are strong in return.
Traumatic union
We are told a double story: one is Rinnan’s upbringing and development, from a poor, bullied child to a sadistic psychopath in the service of the Nazis. The second story of the Jew Hirch Kommisar and his family:
Those who died, those who fled, and those who moved to Rinnan Village after the war.
The stories intertwine without a tight chronology, the scene where Hirch is shot repeats itself, like the traumatic center that it is. Sometimes we see parallel actions on stage, other times one or the other takes over the story. This part is cleverly worked out, but I find myself wondering if the dramatization should be chosen more selectively in the material of the novel: Taken with fewer scenes, with a greater opportunity to delve into each one.
Get answers
In the theatrical version we get the stories of Rinnan’s life, but little answer to what exactly made him the monster he became: sometimes scenes with stylized body language create a comedic effect that doesn’t benefit power and the progress of history. Other times, the controls work brilliantly:
The stylization of Rinnan’s training in torture and interrogation techniques is a dark highlight.
The slow flight of the young curator brothers across the stage is also effective. The scenography, with two scenes, where a basement is revealed after a break, is forceful, and the music and light impress.
The scratched scars
The setup works even better after a break, when family life in the villa brings the past into play. The collapse of the married mother in the house where the nightmare is still literally trapped in the basement walls strikes, as does the helplessness of the family.
It is said in the play that, according to Jewish tradition, we all die twice, once when the heart stops beating, once when the deceased is remembered for the last time or his name is said.
It’s beautiful, but it’s also true for figures like Rinnan:
His name, his history cannot be forgotten in this house, just as it must not be forgotten in our history. The scars engrave his name in the history of this family. This hurts.
The stumbling block
So it is strong and successful that the story harmonizes with the story of Hirch Kommissar. Here we hear the takes, where he and the theater director Gleditch are filmed in 1942, but on stage the Commissioner remains standing.
And it still remains in memory.
This is how, and this is how, this performance succeeds. The obstacle can be found outside of Klostergata 35 in Trondheim.
