If one is to call Taylor Mac’s piece “Hen” a black comedy, it is in print black. The Ibsen Prize winner’s corona-exposed Norwegian premiere of “Hen” is a celebration of the Weird Culture Year 2022, and also a piece that is impossible to watch without thinking of the mass shooting during Pride in Oslo in June. “He” is a piece that is both about finding yourself and about losing yourself. On the surface, the performance invites enjoyable laughter. It’s colourful: Mum has purple hair, an orange blouse and neon pink slippers, Dad is dressed like a clown in a dress. Tragedy is still the first thing that meets me when I have to step across the small theater stage at the Torshovteatret in Oslo. Because where can I step without bumping into the scenography? On the way to their seats, the premiere audience carefully walks around pizza boxes and cardboard plates, duct-taped furniture, and countless items of clothing that never found their way into a closet. ROT: While Isaac (Sigurd Myhre, right) has been in the war, mother has started a liberation project which involves the absence of clearing, cleaning and cooking. From left: Jaden Healey, Marika Enstad and Lasse Lindtner (back). Photo: Øyvind Eide Kaoskrefter Feel free to call it white trash. But a revolution is taking place at this filling station, at least if mother herself is to be believed. Because things have happened in the Connor family. The eldest son Isaac (Sigurd Myhre) quickly experiences this when he returns after three years of hard war service. The home has been turned upside down. Father (Lasse Lindtner) has had a stroke and is reduced to a clown in a dress. Mother (Marika Enstad) has freed herself from the patriarchy, cleaning duty and a bunch of other conventions. And sister Max (Jaden Healey) is gone. It is the latter that is at the heart of Mac’s piece. Liberation as revenge The play is like a long day’s journey towards night, a journey into something that is getting darker and darker. Because the closet can’t be fuller of skeletons than it is with the Connor family (although Max has proudly gotten out of his). The soldier Isaac is sent home from the military in disgrace. Father, now reduced to a battered, speechless clown, has been violent for years. Now mother takes revenge in the name of liberation. RELEASE PROJECT: As punishment for violence and infidelity, Paige (Marika Enstad) sees her intention to humiliate her husband (Lasse Lindtner) after he was hit by a stroke. Photo: Øyvind Eide Isaac’s job has been to pick up the remains of those killed in the war, and he wants to return to something familiar and safe when he returns home. But the Connor family’s order has crumbled, replaced by Mother’s chaos. “We don’t do cleaning.” “We don’t do cooking.” On the other hand, they use tape and cardboard to cover up repairs that should have been done. When Mother embraces Max’s identity as trans and helps him forward, it is a matter of course in the play – for the playwright, Mother and Max himself. But freeing oneself from the heteronormative is not enough for the mother. She takes it all out. In the new, her womanhood, she finds opportunities to make up for years of violence and infidelity from her (now defenseless) husband. She declares that all genders are fluid, dresses the man in a dress and feeds him with estrogen. The liberation project becomes pure selfishness on the mother’s part. A place of doom and revenge. Marika Enstad plays mother with intensity and fury. At the same time, she is impossible not to laugh at. The closet of the Connor family is full of skeletons, and the stroke-stricken father Arnold (Lasse Lindtner) must atone for his sins in a clown costume. Photo: Øyvind Eide Dark and impressive It’s really hard to laugh when it gets so dark. Taylor Mac makes fun of political correctness and shows that liberation can also be unfree, and director Catrine Telle has followed that up well. At the same time, the play’s challenging aspects emerge precisely in the balance between the absurd, the liberating and the very dark. Taylor Mac sometimes offers platitudes to clarify the characters. Many of the skeletons that fall out of the cupboards are not particularly surprising. The ingenuity of the direction corrects some of this. “She” simultaneously thematizes human dignity on a deep level. It is the soldier, he who has been carrying corpses for three years, who most clearly highlights this in the performance. THE RETURNED SON: Isaac (Sigurd Myhre) is strongly marked by the war. When he comes home, it is not order, but chaos. Against his mother’s rules, he sets about cleaning and washing. Photo: Øyvind Eide In a way, there are four main characters in the play, and everyone’s perspectives are clearly presented. But it’s almost too much to take it all in at once. Each character carries a whole catalog of issues, and one must choose a perspective (or watch the play several times and, for example, follow a new character each time). They are all fighting for their way of seeing life. The actors defend their characters well. When Healey, who plays Max, calms down the slightly too eager, juvenile facts from the premiere, this role will also be better grounded. SALON: Mother has taken Max out of school and is homeschooling. Every Saturday is cultural Saturday, and at home they have salons. Here, Max (Jaden Healey) tentatively plays a banjo. Photo: Øyvind Eide Much more than fun Taylor Mac has pointed out in a statement that America is often compared to the prodigal son from the parable in the Bible. In “He”, both sons come home. One to what is experienced as disorder and chaos, the other in harmony with itself. In “He”, it is not the children – he, she or she – who are the problem. It’s the adults’ ghosts. The play ends as it began, in chaos. And as I step over cardboard sheets and trash on the way out, I wonder how liberating the extreme really is. I thought Taylor Mac was going to make me laugh. Instead, I have been given a lot to think about. news reviewer Photo: Øyvind Eide Title: “Hen” Location: Torshovteatret Director: Catrine Telle Cast: Marika Enstad, Lasse Lindtner, Jaden Healey, Sigurd Myhre Set designer and costume designer: Katja Ebbel Lighting designer: Martin Myrvold Composer/sound designer: Stein Johan (Steinjo) Grieg Halvorsen Mask: Hege Ramstad Dramaturg: Njål Helge Mjøs
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