As a rule, an 80-minute solo performance
is going to be either “showy” or “tell-y”: either crammed with tricks
and tics or taking a more conventional storytelling tack which relies
on the material and the performer’s magnetism to keep the audience
engaged.
Doktor Glas is an
example of the latter; this stage adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg’s
1905 epistolary novel is about the words, and about our oblique
insights into the eponymous character as he recounts his tale of his
fascination with the wife of an odious priest and his murder of said
pastor to save her from a loveless marriage.
There is one teensy problemette with such an approach in this instance:
the words in question are in Swedish.
To be sure, there are surtitles and a consummate performance from
Krister Henriksson. But it is a low-key performance, almost audaciously
so. Henriksson makes minor forays into characterisation of other
figures: a guttural, coughing voice for the pastor, a lighter tone for
his wife and so on. A few times he grows moderately animated for 30
seconds or so, as the doctor fantasises about administering cyanide to
the priest or writhes in anticipation of his arrest. There are even
hints at the doctor’s own character: his repeated hand-washing suggests
a fastidiousness quite at odds with his conduct here. Linus Fellbom’s
lighting works almost as many subtle changes on the spare
consulting-room set as there are in Henriksson’s similarly discreet
performance.
Yet all in all the question remains: since the piece is essentially a
verbal one, what has led this production in (for Britons) such a
little-known language to visit the West End, even for a month? The
answer lies in television’s recent love affair with Scandinavian drama
series such as
The Killing
and
Borgen. Henriksson is
being marketed here not as an accomplished stage and screen actor
appearing in a Swedish National Theatre production, but as the actor
who played the titular detective inspector in the series which began
this fashion,
Wallander
(prior to its English-language remake starring Kenneth Branagh). In
this regard, the overall effect of the production is quite fitting:
without insight into choices of word or turns of phrase, or the
hinterland of ethical arguments in the original novel, one is left with
a broad impression of the tale itself, which comes over simply as a
kind of bourgeois proto-
noir.
Written for the Financial
Times.