Review: De obehöriga

“Housing company meeting becomes both twisted comedy and horror at Lilla Teatern

John Ajvide Lindqvist has written a hilarious and suitably eerie comedy about how a housing company meeting goes off the rails.

The Unauthorized at Lilla Teatern, directed by David Sandqvist, offers comedy with a high recognition factor.

The neighbors are like most people, ordinary and insane in their own quiet ways. They all carry some contourless anxiety and obsessive thoughts.

A mother of young children (Lommi) worries that her child will be exposed to dangerous chemicals.

The hipster with a dog at the doggy daycare (Rahem) suffers from such existential fomo that he is driven out on the street in the evenings, anywhere, when he can’t stand the feeling that life is passing him by.

Töölö’s uncle (Wigelius) can’t shake off the feeling that these neighbourhoods, which he has been familiar with since childhood, are shifting and moving in some barely noticeable way.

Sarkola’s man in a flannel shirt exudes the middle-aged man’s discomfort at being out of time. Everything in his being seems to rub against new male norms and language, which makes him fragile and quarrelsome.

Pia Runnakko steals the show with her brilliant lady next door who lives in some kind of tabloid reality where people are shot to death left and right.”

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