WORLD ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PREMIERE
WORLD ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PREMIERE
"Starkly beautiful"..one of those theatrical moments that leave you shaken, and yet somehow strengthened." - Libération
"Performances are very good in Frank McNamara's production..."
"This study of what war does to a family is uncompromising and effective."
"Congratulations to the New for commissioning a translation of a play which only premiered in Sweden last year. War is hell, but here hell is chillingly compelling."----------------Stephen Dunne, Sydney Morning Herald
"Pain that hits after the war is finished."
"The performances are uniformly strong..."
"This is relevant drama penned by a prolific writer at the peak of his powers...and New Theatre's production pays due credit to the power of his language."------------------Gary Smith, Daily Telegraph
"Finally a play which instructs without being didactic, and offers hope without being sentimental. A topical insight into the struggles of humanity in a part of the world remote to us in both distance and experience."---Jason Cornwall, SX News
"...all Australians (and especially our present government) should see this play and reflect on those horrors, which motivate the need to seek asylum." "...an extraordinarily sensitive and aware performance."-------Audience member, Opening Night (name supplied)
With an enormous output of poetry, prose and more than 50 full-length stage
plays translated into some 30 languages, Lars Norén (born 1944) is one of
Sweden's most performed playwrights. Norén is considered the artistic heir
of Ingmar Bergman, and the most significant Swedish dramatist since
Strindberg. His powerful psychological studies of family conflict align him
with O'Neill and Ibsen. Since 1999 he has been artistic director of the
socially-committed RiksDrama arm of the Riksteatern, the Swedish national
touring theatre.
'WAR' (original title 'Krig') is a sparsely written, superbly constructed drama of relationships, but the thing which makes it so strikingly important to Australians who have never known war, is the devastating insight it gives into the realities of survival when all values have been destroyed. For these people, in the ruins of their homeland, the horror continues. Abandoned by the world's media in search of newer stories, they have no voice in society. Norén gives them one.
Director Frank McNamara ('The Biko Inquest', 'The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs') heads an exceptional company, and Anna Landgren's specially commissioned Australian translation captures the crackling vernacular which is characteristic of Norén's dialogue. No rhetoric here; Norén says that he prefers an audience to lean forward to listen, not back because it's too loud.
Director: Frank McNamara