Jon Fosse is one of Europe’s most
renowned living dramatists, a Nobel nominee and occupant of a
grace-and-favour residence in the grounds of the Norwegian royal
palace. Yet British stagings of his plays scarcely ever elicit more
than polite responses. His style is spare, but not the kind of spare
that suggests underlying profundity so much as the kind that asks us to
take it on trust; we seldom do.
Director Simon Usher crystallises this approach in his UK premiere
staging of Fosse’s 2004 play
Dei
døde hundane. The family (all unnamed) in this rural house speak
with a stilted self-consciousness and a fondness for pauses and verbal
tics which is distinctly Pinterian. However, Pinter’s menace is absent;
one gets the feeling that this mood is due principally to those long
Norwegian winter evenings that The Mother mentions at one point. Nor is
there such a palpable vein of the absurd as in Pinter; our occasional
giggles, and the more sustained laughter that breaks out when it is
revealed that The Young Man’s beloved dog is lying dead outside the
window, all feel transgressive and disrespectful. Perhaps Fosse’s
humour is simply too dry for us, but given that The Young Man is fairly
clearly a chronic clinical depressive, it seems more charitable to
accept that the fault is ours in chuckling rather than Fosse’s in
poking fun at such a condition.
At any rate, The Young Man, The Mother, The Sister, The Brother-In-Law
and The Friend drift in and out, at first wondering where the dog is,
then wondering why the offstage neighbour shot it, finally wondering in
horror – or rather, not wondering, but not daring to voice the obvious
question – who stabbed said neighbour to death. The final movement
between Young Man and Mother epitomises Danny Horn’s and Valerie
Gogan’s performances as the mainstays of the production; it is
reminiscent of Ibsen’s
Ghosts,
until Fosse undercuts it… again, perhaps deliberately, but to us
unsatisfyingly. Usher’s production makes this feel less empty than some
other Fosse plays seen here in the past, but still nowhere near as
freighted with meaning as I suspect we are intended to believe.
Written for the Financial
Times.