Sweat and saliva – Shakespeare at his best: on stage

Last night I witnessed an amazing performance of Richard III at the Royal Danish Theatre. It really convinced me that Shakesperare belongs on stage. Here we can smell the sweat and almost taste the bitter tears as the drama unfold in front of us.

The setting is minimal: the walls are made out of giant blackboards, and chairs are lined up along them. The stage basically looks like a classroom waiting for a lesson to start and like bunch of young students the actors enter the stage singing and settling down in the chairs. On the blackboards written in white chalk with elegant letters are the names of all the characters in Shakespeare’s Richard III. They are organised neatly in family trees to give an idea of the different clans and family ties within the English royal blood line.

But one by one the names are crossed out as Richard kills off each rival on the way to the throne. In the center of the stage strangulation becomes an art form. Every killing is performed with the bare hands, just flesh on flesh. No blood or firearms, but pure human muscle.

Richard is played by Søren Sætter Lassen, one of my favourite actors. He can look small and insignificant, ridiculous even, and then suddenly the lines in his face changes and a schizophrenic power monster reveals itself. In general the story is played out with extreme intimacy. It becomes a raw and naked experience as every actor gives their sweat, spit and tears in this gruesome story.

Hamlet - and a mint

Late summer in Copenhagen usually means a least one performance of Hamlet at either at the Elsinore castle or somewhere else in the city. And this year we had a very special guest Hamlet at Elsinore castle in the form of the very lovely Jude Law. Tickets of course were sold out in a blink of an eye, so I didn’t get to see it. And according to the reviews I didn't really miss any ground shaking experience.
–So to get my annual Hamlet fix I went else where, to see quite a different sort of Hamlet: A silent, female one: Asta Nielsen as Hamlet in the 1921 silent film version of the classical play. It was my first experience with Shakespeare as a silent film and I’m not sure I would recommend it. As much as I love Shakespeare’s plays in different versions and performances, it just doesn’t seem right when we don’t hear the words. The piano playing that accompanied it almost made it hard to stay awake for this 2 hour film.

The idea of Hamlet as a woman seemed in this film seems a bit of an excuse to get the great Asta Nielsen to play such a famous role. It wasn’t really used to explore any other aspects of the play or the characters, which I think was too bad. Asta, I should emphasise, really delivered a stunning performance and was not as accidentally funny as the rest of the cast was. The extremely exaggerated death scenes of both Gertrude and Claudius become really funny and comic relief-like.

So after such a heavy Shakespearian experience, Nerd Girl needed something to pick her up. So what could be better than an ‘After Shakespeare mint’? I’m sure they were invented especially for such an evening.

Carmen - an inspiration

A few nights back I saw a performance of Carmen by the Danish Opera Academy and it made me think of the woman Carmen. Who is this femme fatale at the centre of Bizet's famous opera and how has she been portrayed ?
This is one of the first illustrations of a Carmen from the performance in 1875.
I've always thought of the opera Carmen as something of an odd mix – it takes place in Seville, Spain and yet they sing in French. The original novella was also written by a Frenchmen so, I guess it makes sense that way around. Any way Carmen is characterized as a free spirit – a gypsy, who belongs to no one.
In the different performances that I have seen, it has varied a great deal how much sympathy she is given.

She has been played as vulgar and cynical in her pursue of Don José, making her uninteresting in my opinion.
At other times she is seen almost as a witch and very mysterious -highlighting the her gypsy background and hinting that she bewitches Don José, who fall madly in love with her. But in my view she is more than just a seductive vixen. She is has a vulnerable side in her fear of death and her attempt to remain independent.
This Carmen has a masculine quality about her with the cigar and hat and her very stern look.
This following clip is from Frencesco Rosi's film version of Carmen with Julia Migenes as Carmen and Placido Domingo as Don José. This is clearly an 1980s Carmen: she looks like Cher. But this is also a good examples of the witch-version of Carmen I think.



>And then there is Carmen Jones, a musical after the opera. Carmen's gypsy roots are not part of the musical as they are in the opera, but the character of Carmen and the plot is basically the same. Carmen Jones in a modern woman, who just like Carmen of 1875 does not want to be owned by anyone.

The power of Martha

I will tell you of a performance of Edward Albee’s ‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ I saw last night at Gasværket.
‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ is one of my favourite plays and I saw it a few years back for the first time staring the Danish comedian actress Søs Egelind as Martha. She is most famous for her funny performances in comedy shows, but in that production she proved that she really has an incredible talent for serious acting. In my eyes Egelind’s performance was very overlooked in the world of Danish theatre – she really deserved an award for it, but I think many critics still only see her as a comedian. It is safe to say – without exaggerating – that she gave me one of my greatest theatre-experiences ever. And I’ve been a theatre-goer since I basically could walk. In general that production made such an impression on me that I already had my doubts about going to see a new and different one last night. One’s first great experience of a play is rarely exceeded and I guess that makes me a though critic for this production.
But Albee’s play is such a classic and it will and should be staged again and again – and it deserves to constantly be challenged by new actors and directors. Last nights production has already received a lot of critical praise which ultimately helped to persuade me to go.

And I did enjoy it and I enjoyed the fact that it was very different from the first one I saw. But it still didn’t surpass my first experience at all. In this production Martha was played by the great Danish diva Paprika Steen. She defiantly has the temper and desperation which such a part needs and I think she was the absolute best thing about the whole production. Martha’s inner strengths and weaknesses are vital in the play, but what fascinates me the most is the ‘war’ between Martha and George. Unfortunately, I think that the George here played by Lars Brygmann was too weak to match Paprika’s Martha. All his rage and physic game playing seemed too random and lacked a deep ongoing plotting hatred that I think George has towards Martha.
At Gasværket Martha is sexy and George is the old intellectual – but I failed to really believe their mutual attraction. This amazingly complicated relationship seems only to break out into open war because of the two guests – Honey and Nick – but as I understand it, Martha and George have been at war most of their marriage. In the production at Gasværket it seems as if this war starts and ends that night and thus reducing Honey and Nick to odd comic relief gadgets through out the play.

The stage design was amazing, done by Gasværket's manager Jon Stephensen. With a rotating stage construction and a house with moving walls, George and Martha’s home seems like combination of Pandora’s Box and a fish tank.

Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.

So the new royal playhouse opened last weekend with a gala performance of (surprise) Hamlet. I think it is safe to say that everyone who's anyone in Dansih society was there. Well not really everyone, because, alas, they forgot to invite me – something is rotten indeed.

To make sure that I had something to tell you about this new and amazing playhouse I was able to get a ticket to one of the other plays. – This new architectonical wonder has three stages and I visited the smallest one where ‘Hunger’ premiered. The play is an adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s novel by Jon Fosse with Janus Nabil Bakrawi in the lead role.

But before I give you my view on this play I have to tell you some more about the house. The playhouse is the second new building The Royal Danish Theatre has acquired over the last year – The Opera house is of course the first one. Now that the royal theatre has such excellent playing conditions let's only hope their artistic work can live up to the standards.

The playhouse was designed by the architects Lundgaard & Tranberg and is situated beautifully by the harbour in central Copenhagen. I’m usually not a big fan of square glass buildings and I had my doubts when I saw the work in progress. But this playhouse is one of the best examples of how glass can make a building come to life, rather than leaving it with a cold, dark and polished surface.
Another cool thing about this playhouse is that it has such a cave-like feeling inside. The lights and the stone walls make you feel really at home. There is a very cosy atmosphere in the foyer which downplays the ‘royal theatre-stiffness' – a stiffness which I think is clearly present in the new Royal Opera House located just on the other side of the water. There the light is so bright, the gold so shiny and the foyer so cold that you can't relax.

During the intermission in Hamlet I snug in to the main stage of the playhouse and in there it's even more like a cave than in the foyer. It’s dark, with raw stone bricks on the walls and as a contrast the red velvet chairs remain as a kind of reference to classical royal theatre. The smallest stage where I was is not special in the same way- it's a small black box with, I expect, a movable stage construction.

The play’s the thingI went to the smallest stage with only 100 seats designed for more intimate theatre experiences. ‘Hunger’ is basically the story of a hungry young man walking the streets for days looking for food and money. It derives originally from Knut Hamsun's novel and has also been made into a very famous film version by Hening Carlsen from 1966.

I think that the uninteresting storyline is the main problem for the play because, well, there is no story – or a very very slim one. We are presented with only little dialogue and long monologues and thus the performance rests with the ability of Janus Nabil Bakrawi to hold your attention for 1 hour and 30 min without intermission. Luckily he does a really, almost ass-kicking, good job – I guess you don’t really kick ass in such a serious role. Anyway, he does his best to communicate and make us feel his hunger and despair. Your stomach turns as he desperately stuffs himself with paper and then vomit in disgust.

But the play also holds a delicate balance between tragedy and comedy when he sadly keeps refusing any money offered to him and then humiliatingly tries to sell his ragged blanket and the plastic buttons from his coat. The only time you really jump in your seat though, is when the steep stage constructions collapse under him making such a laud crash that even the sleepiest member of the audience wakes up. However, it's not only the otherwise bare set-design, created by Sidse Jørgensen, that brings action to all the words; the direction is vitally and lively done by Rolf Heim, who brings life this heavy text through constant movement and live music. Unfortunately, it does not change the fact that this play, about ‘starving’ yourself to achieve artistic insight, lacks development or progression and therefore exhausts its audience in the end.

The talented Marie í Dali

After all of last week's fashion talk I think it's time to return to some geeky topics – after all I am Nerd Girl.

Therefore to night I'll attack something different that's also very dear to me: theatre and stage and costume design. I guess in some sense you could argue a connection to the world of fashion. I love going to almost all sorts of stage performances. Last week I saw ‘Maskarade’ by Danish composer Carl Nielsen at the Royal Opera House.
The story of ‘Maskarade’ stupid – so I’ll only bore you with the basics: a lot of love complications, an evil patriarch and a happy ending at a large masquerade ball. The singing and music was great, the direction was witty and gave a good new life to this old banal piece of drama. What I really want to tell you about is the stage design: It was made by one of Denmarks most interesting stage and costume designers Marie í Dali. She has been working mostly with opera, and I’ve seen only 4 of her productions, yet every one has made such an impression on me that I’ve often ended up remembering more about the set designs than the actual play or opera.

She has worked quite a lot with stage director and the creative director of the Royal Opera Kasper Bech Holten who has also directed ‘Maskarade’. The set design here was modern and funny with such an intelligent use of props (the playboy-bunny towls and all the skincare products) to create a lifestyle image. Í Dali's use of room and perspective are also In the bedroom for example í Dali had tiled the perspective:

I also really enjoyed í Dali’s work in Holten’s direction of The Ring Cycle by Wagner, where she worked together with Steffen Aarfing. I’m not really a Wagner-fan, the music is too heavy for me and I tend to get bored. But from The Copenhagen Ring Cycle I only saw ‘Das Walkyrie’, and I was blown away - it was not boring at all but so heartfelt and moving. The mood in the songs was so beautifully reflected in the different sets:

The valkyries with their black wings and party dresses were so refined and scary at the same time:So far I've only seen Marie Í Dali's work on stage, but I've read that she's also done some Danish films which I look forward to seeing. Actually, in the future I just might start choosing my plays and operas by their stage designer instead of by director or composer.