The (Scandinavian) Emperor's New Clothes?

Oh boy, I’m going to annoy some of you today.

It’s a question I keep asking myself so I thought I’d ask it here on the blog, to set the thoughts down and see how they might look in black and white.  It’s not a deep moral question – mine rarely are – but sometimes the more trivial questions can lead on to the deeper truths.  

Not this time, mind you, but never mind.

 

Why are we all watching Scandinavian Drama and, perhaps more interestingly, is it really as good as we all like to think it is?

Annoyed yet?  Hang in there.

Actually before I go on, I need to place myself firmly in this picture.  I love Scandinavian Drama.  Saturday nights, Beeb Four, I’m there with my can of beer, lapping it up (the drama, not the beer)  (well…).  So I’m not on the outside, looking in here, I’m on the inside_  you get the picture.

We recently finished watching ‘The Bridge’ and Patricia and I really enjoyed it.  This was more fun for me that The Killing if only because my wife stayed along for the ride instead of falling into a semi-comatose state within minutes of Sarah Lund appearing on screen.  So, yeah, we watched ‘The Bridge’ and Saga took a while to warm to and Martin was loveable but a bit of a dog and we thought we knew who did it but we didn’t really and it was all good.  When it was over, we looked at each other and we agreed that it had been good and then I went on Twitter and agreed that it had been good and then we met our friends and they had quite like it too (although don’t tell them the end cos they had Sky Plussed the last two episodes).  It was all good.  Roll on the second series.

Yes, but how good was it really?  Eh?

After it was finished, I got to thinking about an ITV Sunday Night series called ‘The Bridge’.  Two hours a week for five weeks.  We would watch it, sure we would, we would give it a good chance, but would we like it?  If it was the same story, the same script, the same quality of acting, would we similarly adore it?

I don’t think we would.

I think we would probably come to hate it.  We might find the characters over-simplified, we might bemoan the lack of sophistication in the script, the woodenness of some of the lesser character actors.  We might also worry about the promising sub-plots unceremoniously dumped along the way, the jarring tendency to incidental melodrama, the ‘Relationship 101’ approach to affairs of the heart. 

You get where I’m coming from now.  You’re getting annoyed.  I can tell.  I'm like that kid, in the crowd, shouting at The Emperor, "Hey, I can see your willy!" (Which, in Scandanavian Drama, is often the case anyway).

But, remember, I like all this Scandinavian Drama, just like you do.  I’m on your side.  Hell, I even wrote a whole blog thing about The Killing over here.  So please don’t shoot me, I’m just asking the question.  Sit down again for a moment and let’s think some more about it.

The answer, as it often is, is simple.

It’s Different.

That’s it, isn’t it?  It’s good but that’s not the main reason we migrate towards it.  We go there because it’s Different.  It’s a different world.  They speak a different language for a start but that’s only one thing.  All the actors are new to us, we’ve never seen them before, it’s like they’ve dropped from a different planet.  The landscapes are markedly different, cold and bleak and wild and cold and, oh, I said cold, and cold and cold and cold. 

Even the doors open the wrong way for Chrissakes!  It is Different and that’s why we, myself firmly included, love it so much.  It’s good too, if it wasn’t good we wouldn’t be there, we’re not stupid.  But it’s not quite as good as we may think it is, it’s the Difference that makes up for that.

I think the subtitles play their part too.  Obviously they contribute to the Difference but it’s a little more than that.  They simplify things considerably.  You’ll have noticed that the characters on screen often seem to be saying much more than the subtitles are.  They use each other’s names a lot and the subtitles hardly do this at all.  My pal Jason Arnopp has written an enlightening blog post on the art of writing subtitles for film, here’s a link.  Everything is pared down to the quick.  I think this becomes an attractive aspect of the Scandinavian Dramas too, this simplification of the text.  We get the pure drama without the embellishment of the everyday nuances.

I loved The Killing and The Bridge and I’m loving Borgen at the moment (I’m late to it, I know).  Borgen is sharp and witty but it’s no West Wing for sharpness and wit, yet is seem almost comparable because it is so Different.  That’s a little illustration of my point right there.

That’s it.  Now I’ll just read this back and see how it sounds.

Tak and goodnight.

Druid Murphy Starts a New Conversation on a Hot May Evening

Our waiter is all business and intuition.  “You’re going to Druid aren’t you?  Don’t worry we’ll get you out of here on time.”  Galway is proud of Druid and rightly-so.  Even the waiters conspire to assemble the audiences in a timely fashion. 

This evening was the opening performance of an epic run for Druid Theatre Company.  ‘DruidMurphy’ presents a cycle of three of Tom Murphy’s most acclaimed plays in a tour that will take them to New York, Washington DC and Tuam, to name but a few.  Tonight, I was lucky enough to be in the Town Hall Theatre (on time) to see ‘Conversations on a Homecoming’ for the second time in my life.

‘Conversations’ holds a special place in my heart and memory.  When I met my wife-to-be in London, she was newly arrived there from her hometown of Galway and, before leaving, she had seen Druid do ‘Conversations’ in Flood Street.  She told me all about it and, when it finally arrived at the Donmar Warehouse in London, she brought me to see it.  Then she bought me a linen-bound edition of the text which I have here on my desk now.

I had to explain that.  I had to explain that I can’t really tell you about the performance I saw tonight as an isolated event.  I can only tell you about the amalgam of the play I saw over twenty-five years ago and the one I saw this evening.

For me, ‘Conversations’ is about many things.  It’s about going-away and coming-back, failure and embitterment, friendship and enmity, small town morals and big city vacuums.  It is, above all else, an utterly ‘Irish’ play.  More specifically, it is a ‘Galway’ play and the subtlety of the writing can make us believe that we actually know real people who are the actual doubles of the characters in this play.

I thought the original cast were Definitive and did not see how this (mostly) new cast could carry this play off again for the old-timers like me.  Indeed, for the first five minutes-or so, it was as if the Theatrical Ghosts of McGinley and Stafford hung over the characters as they assembled in the bar.  Not for long though.  Rory Nolan as Junior was the first to win me over.  God, he was so like Trish’s brother Enda, it was unbelievable.  (He wasn’t, really, I suppose, but Enda is Real Galway and so was Junior.. Real Galway).  Aaron Monaghan as Liam was simply outstanding.  His descent from marginalised compadre towards belligerent drunk was recognisable to anyone who has ever spent time in an Irish bar.  Like a Crumpled Pacino or a Displaced Bada-Bing Back Room Sidekick, he radiated shady dealings and dubious integrity.  He was a black hole for respect and affection.  A wonderful performance.

Garrett Lombard as Tom had the harder sell.  Tom is not the most likeable character but he is, perhaps, the one we most identify with.  He wraps himself in rhetoric and cynicism but the overriding fact of his existence is that he has failed and this failure has crept up and blindsided him and left him solid and lost in the corner with his borrowed newspaper.

Marty Rea is Michael, the returned friend.  He gets to deliver the killer line of the play, which I wouldn’t dare throw away here.  As a moment, it was extremely effective and Tom’s reaction to it was equally so.

The wonderful presence of Marie Mullen onstage gives this new production this deeper context of time passing.  Marie was here twenty five years ago too, being just a brilliant and funny as ‘Peggy’ as Eileen Walshe is now.  Now, however Marie plays this aged ‘Missus’ and the sight of her (playing older than she is) in Pat Leavy’s role is nonetheless our own personal sucker-punch of nostalgia and aging.

Garry Hynes directs the play with precision.  The sequential placing of pint glasses on tables seem almost musical at times and the choreography of chairs and cigarettes and money and drink is an integral part of the whole.

‘Conversations’ puts us in a place where a licence is granted not just to serve alcohol but to argue and berate and fight and curse and laugh and hate and love.  A place where you can finally admit that everything is ruined and without joy only then to wipe it all on the doormat on the way out the door to stumble home and perhaps come back and do it all again another evening.

‘Conversations’ isn’t always easy.  It’s preachy at times because the characters in it tend towards the preachy.  It’s rather bleak in its outlook and there is real sadness in so many of the characters therein.  But there is recognisable truth in it and that is always ultimately uplifting.

Congratulations to Druid for bringing back ‘Conversations on a Homecoming’ with even more weight and depth and truth than it had twenty-five years ago.

And that’s saying something.