Review of « Blank » on Dramaten
A void that can never be filled, a new unwritten blade, the vacuum in the head at a total brain drop, the door in an incomplete story, a form that must be filled in. « Blank », in capital letters around, can mean different things for the different women in the British play that constitutes the last spring premiere.
Common to women is that they are all on a social chart of the judiciary and social services, and that they are surrounded by male violence
Someone has been subjected to violence, someone himself has practiced violence, someone has lost a child, kidnapped a child, been forced into prostitution, failed in their professional ethics, struggled with an investigation, sought care or protection. Common to women is that they are all on a social chart of the judiciary and social services, and that they are surrounded by male violence. Alice Birch wrote the play 2019 on order by the National Theater and theater company Clean Break, founded in a women’s prison in 1979 to give vote to women in the criminal system.
The empty surface of the title Could also refer to the script’s open invitation to each theater director that takes on its 100 independent scenes, which must thus be selected and arranged completely so that each set becomes unique, and where some replicas are left open to the actors to fill in.
Form and feminism are key words for Birch’s drama, and in « Blank » the concept becomes an illustrative expression of the content’s story. For an icy insight, formulate during the course of the performance: these unique mosaics that in theory can be built from all the pieces of the play, do they really become so different? Will they not all show the same recurring picture of men’s violence and society’s inability? Is it possible to put the puzzle in a different way?
Here is a commute between threatening and hopeful, at least glimpses of the latter
It’s that feeling which affects Maria Åberg’s set, the Swedish, long British -based director who also accounted for the performance in London. Here is a commute between threatening and hopeful, at least glimpses of the latter. She has ten super actors in her ensemble, each with a tangible pathos for her characters who feel in the stomach in individual scenes.
Nevertheless, the set as a whole has problems with distance. The big stage feels huge and static despite the twisting scene’s movement spin and a suggestive lighting design. The scenography of arranged interior fragments from home environments appears to be rigidly unused (except when Ingela Olsson is furiously demolishing a playhouse with fireball). The costume of beautiful summer dresses in blue, pink and floral with fresh gym suits are too fresh and cool.
An interrogation scene with a matte suspended Julia Dufvenius as the alcoholic social secretary who missed an urgent situation during a home visit reminds me of German Felicia Zeller’s « a sea of Kaspar hausers » at the Tribunal 2012, where a laconic social secretary plans a home visit with himself. The theme at large for the thoughts of Paula Stenström’s sets on society and violence, such as « People respect me now » at Turteatern 2015. Both examples are much more screwed up than Åberg is looking for here, but that is also not the screwed I lack. Without the proximity, the one that fills the air. Here the shiny void takes over.
Read more:
The male violence « lies like a fog » in Dramaten’s women’s jerk
