It’s a big event every time Jon Fosse comes up with a new play. He is one of the most played contemporary playwrights in the world, and the greatest Norwegian playwright after Ibsen. In 2014, he stopped writing for the theatre. In 2019, he was back. The newest play, “I swarte skogen inne”, is now playing at Det Westnorske Teateret and is also part of the Bergen Festival. ON WILD ROADS: Karl-Vidar Lende plays the man who has lost his way on a forest road. Photo: Thor Brødreskift It was that poetry, then It’s a rather funny text Fosse has written this time. He is about a young man who just gets in the car and drives, mostly at random, and ends up on a forest road. He does not give up, drives on until he is stuck deep in the forest. Then he goes out to find help, perhaps from someone with a tractor, and gets lost. The play starts as darkness begins. The audience sits on two sides of the hall, and I am in a forest, surrounded by large pine trees. The chairs are placed so that small paths are formed between them. In the middle, on the stage itself, stands a large stone. Composer Sjur Miljeteig enters through a mist-covered gate, as the character Man in a black suit. Miljeteig brings his trumpet and plays warm, beautiful, poetic, long. But with this start, the play makes it difficult for itself: It starts just as one would think a Fosse play should start. In a kind of poetic landscape – but it locks Fosse in the form one imagines a Fosse piece to be performed in. The milieu plays nicely, it’s not. It’s just that the form and materials chosen do not really raise the world premiere of a new Fosse piece. PLAYING BEAUTIFULLY: Sjur Miljeteig is behind the music for the play “I swarte skogen inne” and is himself in one of the roles. He does a good job, but the soundtrack sometimes drowns out the text. Photo: Thor Brødreskift Overdøyva Karl-Vidar Lende plays the main character, the one who took a car trip. Lende has a great comedic talent. The setting with a young confused man who wanders around in the forest and can’t find his car should suit him perfectly. But the direction suggests that he starts in great despair, the frustration explodes early in the play, and then there is little to build from for a shoe player who stands alone on stage for half the performance. Karl-Vidar Lende plays the man who got stuck and got lost in the forest. Photo: Thor Brødreskift The sounding is not on the text’s side either. The music that lies below increases in intensity simultaneously with the text and drowns him out at times – this is how text and music compete for the audience’s attention. I think the dubbing was meant to work against the text, not with him. And at the same time give better space for the text to build itself up with the stillness and the small details that are so important to Fosse. The light absorbs a lot of this. The design is nice, especially the car headlights that frame the scene. GOOD SCENOGRAPHY: Car lights and pine forest are some of the elements used in the scenography. It works well. Photo: Thor Brødreskift “I swarte skogen inne” is an existential drama. There are many transgressions, the play goes back and forth between the mundane and the magical. It gets dark, it snows, the young man dies. But in the meantime, he hears his parents talking about him, there is shame and guilt behind the car trip that took him into the black forest. At the same time, the parents go out to search with lanterns, reflective vests and walking sticks. And then a young woman dressed in white comes and keeps the young man company. An angel, maybe. It’s just that she’s a bit Cinderella-like where she runs around with only one shoe. Why I don’t quite understand. The large, luminous stone is the center of the scene. There, a Young Man (Karl-Vidar Lende) rests in a team with a Young Woman in a White Dress (Reidun Melvær Berge) until the snow and darkness pull the young man in. Photo: Thor Brødreskift What Fosse does not manage very well in this text are the passages where he has written the voices of the man’s parents – where they speak, but are not on stage. The energy is often completely different in the voiceover part, which is also the case here. But these parents, real and reflective as they are when they go out in search of their son, are well played, especially by Arnhild Litlere as the mother. PARENTS: Arnhild Litlere and Svein Roger Karlsen play the roles of the young man’s parents. Behind the roles lies a hint of something dark and complex. The reflective vests and lanterns are nice elements in the dark forest scenography. Photo: Thor Brødreskift Driving stuck “In the black forest inside” is a greeting to everyone who gets lost in themselves and in life. It is not Fosse’s strongest text, but he is warm, plays with words and finds humor in the midst of existential seriousness. But foresight cannot bring out all the humor. There are too many effects for that, too much to take up space. Tools and text do not always work together, which seems to make it difficult for the shoe players. Fosse’s lyrics need space to unfold. However, that space does not allow the text this time. Instead, the foresight does what it is all about: getting stuck in the blackest forest. news reviewer Photo: Nikolai Torgersen / Nikolai Torgersen “In the black forest inside” By: Jon Fosse Director: Miriam Prestøy Lie Set designer and costume design: Dagny Drage Kleiva Lighting design: Arne Kambestad Music: Sjur Miljeteig Actors: Karl-Vidar Lende Reidun Melvær Berge Arnhild Littlere Svein Roger Karlsen Sjur Miljeteig Produced by Det Westnorske Teateret and Det Norske Teatret in collaboration with Festspillene i Bergen.
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“In the black forest inside” at Det Westnorske theateret – Reviews and recommendations
