Review: En blick är en blick är en blick
It’s rough and student-like, but oh my god, such a presence the Theatre Academy’s students cultivate during the performance A Glance Is a Gaze!
Oksana Lommis, Princess Diana, who casts coquettish, shy glances at the audience under her crown of white tulle and ash-blonde hair. Emelie Zilliacus’gripping Ostrobothnian mother character who books a beauty treatment for her poor daughter in the big city of “Håfors”. She really needs care because “pollution sticks to her cheek”. A sticky, completely irresistible mess of dialect and maternal feelings that makes you shudder!
Not to forget Mathilda Kruse as the child who giggles and talks about how she pressures her friend to show her butt to the others in kindergarten. A monologue that forces you to be confronted with any monster traits of a long-repressed kindergarten self.
Text and interpretation fascinate
The performance is a collaboration between the Theatre Academy, Lilla Teatern and the drama project Young Drama. On the stage of Lilla Teatern, third-year acting students stand with their own material. Jessica Grabowsky and Milja Sarkola have acted as supervisors and directors, and of course you can read a certain sarcola factor, that is, acting performances that rise above the normal.
The lyrics revolve around the gaze, both highly desired and unwelcome. The actors test their gaze on the audience, see themselves through the eyes of a loved one and investigate how it feels to be seen for a moment as someone else, bigger and more dazzled. For example, Emelie Zilliacus changes her form from an unknown acting student to the star and alpha male Mikael Persbrandt, and like a magician, takes possession of the entire audience’s attention.
A lot of the material may be unpolished and uneven, but there are many gems here, moments where both text and interpretation are strongly moving. Everyone in the acting troupe is allowed to shine and also takes advantage of the opportunity.
Fascinating atmospheres are cultivated here, such as when Antti Saarikallio’s American stand-up comedian, with aggression problems, forces his surroundings to participate in a therapy session directed by himself. Or Herman Nyby who, with just a wig and a few gestures, creates a lovely wine-sipping grandma, wonderfully “gone”. Emilia Jansson, in turn, finds a credible language in her monologue about a sibling relationship, in a genuine, brutally ugly-looking metropolitan slang.
A look is a look is a look reminds us why theatre is wonderful – that there is something magical about looking at a person, studying them, everything about them that is unique and recognizable.