Review: Grönholms metod

Lie upon lie in dense comedy

Modern Catalan drama is in/06 21:46te spoiled with, only Sergi Belbel has been played a lot in the Nordic countries. Now he has been joined by Jordi Galceran, who around the age of forty has achieved his major international breakthrough with the play Grönholm’s Method. It has been given all over Europe and Latin America.

The Theatre Academy took up the last spring, and as the first professional stage, Lillan has now carefully picked it up and given it its Swedish premiere. There will be one in Finnish in April.

Four people gather in a meeting room at a large international corporation. Here, the audience will understand, a job interview will take place. Large bare surfaces evenly lit by invisible light sources, an almost spartan furnishing, a wall of opaque glass that slopes boldly outwards – like in an air traffic control tower, perhaps, or like in Barcelona where architecture has no borders. The Miró painting that covers a large part of the feature wall, the single issue of El País as one of the four unfolds, all these are light markings that director Pentti Kotkaniemi and set designer Ralf Forsström put in place for localizing purposes already in the first minute of the performance.

What happens next will not be revealed here, because Grönholm’s method rests entirely on its plot. But this is not just any well-made play, but the most intricate play I have ever read and seen, as far as the plot is concerned. The author allows his characters to lie as much as possible with a believable look, while his unique plot construction allows the lying to roll on like a perpetuum mobile. Somewhere inside all lies, at a point beyond all masks, there is indeed the truth. But at Galceran, it takes a long time, just under two dense hours without intermission, before we get to it.

Why this happens is another question. The four are located in “Barcelona” and the group’s headquarters are said to be in “Stockholm”, but the place names are of course interchangeable, in the same way as the people in the play turn out to be. We are in the thin air of the global economy, high up,

At air traffic control height, where so many want to go but where the elimination mechanisms are brutal. Behind the comedy, the play seriously portrays the dehumanization of our society that we see around us on a daily basis. And that we have all become a part of, in the sign of economic expansion efforts and profit maximization.

Not unexpectedly, the roles are well-filled and well-played at Lillan. Carl-Kristian Rundman steals the first quarter of an hour where he wraps his character with uncertain steps, clumsy movements between the armchairs and his repeated “Hey now I get it!” – a comedy actor with the corners of his mouth pulled down, which the audience immediately embraces. Sampo Sarkola makes a softie with playfully androgynous accents and comic dignity under the toreador hat.

Pekka Strang’s licked streak type fits perfectly, as does Jonna Järnefelt’s tense young woman who suddenly switches to erotically challenging bitch. The latter two are one with their roles in an obvious way, while Rundman and Sarkola rather show theirs, play and dance and buff with them. Together, they form a cohesive quartet in what can probably be said to be an acting play.

Gösta Kjellin