Dramatised by Karin Parrot-Jonzon and directed by Ann-Luise Bertell , the play Egenmäktigt menetlus (Arbitrary Procedure ) is as interesting a struggle as Lena Andersson’s novel is. Both the book and the play show how irrational our emotions are, how we row against the wind and fight against windmills, how the last thing that dies is hope.
The prelude to the lecture Ester Holds on Hugo’s art is briefly as follows: Ester and Hugo meet. They start a relationship – at least that’s how Ester perceives it. After a few short meetings, everything runs out in the sand. Ester can’t let go of the thought of Hugo, and she follows him, mostly on the phone. Every time she seems to give up and starts thinking about something else, there is a line from Hugo, which ignites Ester’s hope. A grateful hook to hang the dramatization on.
Ester’s story has a female perspective. She is firmly convinced that she is “right”, and she wants to persuade Hugo to fall in love with her. The interesting question is, if Hugo realizes what is going on at all.
Does he not understand, or does he not care?
One can see Lena Andersson’s Ester as an intellectually sharp but emotionally clueless person. In this production, that’s not really the case. Ester is led by her feelings, but she knows what she wants, and she has good self-confidence after all, she considers herself to have the right on her side. Hugo’s “crime” is thus akin to a broken marriage promise (“You’ve been inside my body”, Ester screams as she rushes after a troubled Hugo with big strides).
Linda Zilliacus’ Ester is a fundamentally self-confident person, she stands up for herself when the wind blows. Here Zilliacus’ interpretation of the role is significant. She is not a dude, but a person who can survive the storm. Her long hair may stand up with nervous electricity, her back may bend and her gaze flicker with uncertainty. In the next scene, however, she tackles Rask and the phone with new touches, even though her thumbs are starting to get tired. The choir of friends, here Anja Bargum and Emilia Nyman, does their best to steer Ester’s thoughts on other tracks, with little success.
Bargum and Nyman, especially Bargum, are the ones who have to stand for the comic clues. They are the ones who have distance and see the hopelessness in Ester’s company. They are on the side of the audience, or stand as representatives for us in the auditorium. Tactfully, but with rolled up sleeves and more muscles than Ester and Hugo combined, they still represent tact and a sense of the seriousness of the situation.
At the beginning of the performance, I was a little worried that Lilla Teatern’s production would stop at a stripped-down image of the tug-of-war that is being waged between Ester and Hugo, that the ideological material that the novel has would be completely left out of the dramatization. This fear was put to shame. In enough glimpses we become part of a moral discussion about utilitarianism and utilitarian ethics, an exchange of ideas that is obviously conducted with greater success in Ester’s head than in Hugo’s post. Emotions are, as it should be in this story, still the most important. Otherwise, the production would have been too dialogue-heavy.
Johan Fagerudd’s Hugo is a strange combination of a wooden goat and a willless, in a way callous, man of culture. While Ester in Linda Zilliacus’ figure, body language and facial expressions is a living woman with potential.
A bit fair considering the surplus of women that there usually is in the theater. Many men may have something to learn. And those who have gone to the hard school of life, which Hugo tries to cheat his way through, can be satisfied.