Review: Ens lite lugn i huset
Competent but predictable relationship farce
Marcus (Max Forsman) comes home with a rare jazz record, and is looking forward to sitting down, listening to his find and having a drink. But fate wants otherwise. Marcus’ wife Therese (Åsa Wallenius) confesses to her husband that she had an extramarital affair a long time ago.
After this, everything goes wrong. The bathroom renovation is not progressing as planned, announces the neighbor Pavel (Sixten Lundberg), who rings the doorbell because water is leaking into his bedroom. In addition, the rebellious adult son Sebastian (Wilhelm Enckell) is coming to dinner. Marcus feels offended by all this, he just wanted to sit down and listen to his new treasure.
The French playwright Florian Zeller is the author of A Little Calm in the House. The director is now Jaakko Saariluoma, who is directing at Lilla Teatern for the first time.
The anguish and egoism of a middle-aged man
Max Forsman once again shows his comedic talent – he carries the farce with his brilliance. Forsman is practically on stage throughout the two-hour performance and there is an impressive amount of text he lays out. Forsman has a perfect comic timing and really personifies the lost middle-aged man’s anguish and egoism. He also did it aptly in the role of Serge in Svenska Teatern’s ART last autumn.
Even a little calm in the house is clearly Forsman’s show, but of course the other roles are also delicious. Sixten Lundberg is really good in the role of the neighbor whose apartment is being destroyed. Marcus sees him primarily as an intrusive annoyance, who doesn’t understand when it’s time to leave. Åsa Wallenius’ somewhat neurotic wife doubts her marriage. Wilhelm Enckell draws down a lot of laughs in the role of goth rocker Sebastian, who insists that his parents should call him “Fucking Rat”. He still feels more like a precocious teenager than an adult.
The other actors have less to work with; Pia Runnakko plays Therese’s best friend Elsa and in the role of Marcus’ best friend Paul is Robert Enckell. The Portuguese construction worker Leo (Fabian Silén), who pretends to be Polish in order to get a job, feels tiresomely stereotyped.
Nerve and structure
Antti Mattila’s set design frames the course of events in a functional way. It breathes a contemporary minimalist design home, where all the furniture is carefully selected and constitutes some kind of statement. Maria Rosenqvist’s costumes are fancy and reflect the characters’ personalities well.
Saariluoma has succeeded well in directing. The performance has both nerve and a functioning structure. The solid acting makes the performance lift, even though the plot itself is quite predictable. Lilla Teatern has a strong farce tradition to lean back on and it shows in the end result.