“The Ridiculous Darkness” at Helsingborg City Theatre becomes in Serbian director Anja Suša’s hands an immensely moving and artistic theater.”

Ultimo in Mogadishu wants to become a fisherman, but he soon discovers that the seas off the Somalian coast, which have previously been rich in fish, are now depleted of fish and barren. British, Dutch and other fishing fleets have fished out everything that lived in it. He decides to switch careers. After being “educated” in piracy, his boat is run-down by a Dutch ship. Ultimo manages to save his skin on the board of it, seizes the chance to capture it – but is then caught and arrested.

A half-an-hour long prolog of “The Ridiculous Darkness” on the small scene of Helsingborg City Theatre consists mostly of an incredibly intense monolog, the arrested pirate’s defense speech in court. Gustav Berg in baggy overall and a black mask displays an intense show of acting in the spirit of Joseph Conrad. He embodies both physically and rhythmically the necessary and hopeless fight against the oppression of far superior forces. “The Ridiculous Darkness” by a German Wolfram Lotz becomes in Serbian director Anja Suša’s hands an immensely moving and artistic theater that speaks to the audience through different senses. We live in times of ever-growing darkness. The darknesses of our age are both ridiculous and foolish. We need art and theater in order to lift our blockages and start a conversation, before it is too late, with blackness and clear sight, but also with some strong humor.

There is a water bucket labeled “The Mediterranean Sea” on the stage. Cecilia Borssén dips wet children’s clothes into the bucket and throws them on the floor – we are spared of seeing the dead bodies of children. Soon Erik Borgeke’s machine gun crazy (American) soldier in camouflage clothing takes over, while the boat of this performance sterns ever more deeply into the river of the Unknown, towards the Heart of Darkness.

Anja Sušaʼs production is supremely artistic, with abrupt jumps between the play’s many pit holes. It is performed as a piece of “arena theater”, which results in rewarding closeness between the performers and the audience. Helga Bumsch’s scene design is exquisite, with the bar at Mr Kurtz’s Club in one corner and a dance pole in the middle, which is being used both for dancing and as a ship mast.

This is a production that should be analyzed less and experienced more, taken in with open senses. Don’t miss it!

Sören Sommelius

The Ridiculous Darkness

Genre: Theatre

Director: Anja Suša

Performers: Erik Borgeke, Cecilia Borssén, Nils Dernevik, Jörgen Düberg

Venue: Helsingborg City Theatre

Set design: Helga Bumsch

Costume Design: Maja Mirkovic

This is not the first time that the theater depicts the world as a night club, cabaret or a carnival. Nevertheless, set designer Helga Bumsch makes a statement by placing the politically speculative liberation war of our time in a suggestive club setting, with bar counters, golden curtains, a DJ and a dancing pole. A sign on the wall shines “Mr Kurtz’ Club” in neon light, as a salute to Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, which was one of the inspiration models for Wolfram Lotz and his play “The Ridiculous Darkness”.

For a successful 35-year old playwright, Lotz, who is now being introduced to Scandinavia by Helsingborg City Theatre, there is no doubt: the age in which we live, the age of moralization, violence and interfering in each other’s business, is nothing more than the sum of parts of a ridiculous entertainment culture. We are playing police, soldiers, victims and the oppressed in a value-relativistic international game of power and supremacy. The bricks are just being moved around, in new conflict constellations that constantly arise.

Director Anja Suša and the excellent cast frame Lotz’ pessimism with a certain reckless, theatrical richness of ideas. Two “heroes”, Erik Borgeke’s yelling officer Pellner and Nils Dernevik’s Carl Bildt-like diplomatic envoy Stefan Torsk, are about to travel up a river in order to seek the disappeared lieutenant colonel Deutinger. They are in a middle of a war, supposedly Afghanistan.

In fact, this is a play about all the possible hotbeds of conflict, both past, and present, where the big Western powers march out, with guns, in idealistic and clumsy attempts to change the fighting and suffering “savages”. They meet a decadent Italian aristocrat, played by Tobias Borvin, who attempts to make the villagers refined and presentable. Borvin reappears in yet another scene, like wreckage from the 1990s Balkan wars, a man that lost everything in the NATO bombings.

Certain episodes and tricks continue to burn on throughout this joyful description of the apocalypse: when Cecilia Borssén, dressed as a nightclub hostess, sits with a water bucket labeled as “the Mediterranean Sea” and washes small children’s clothes, which she then nonchalantly throws onto the floor. Or the anecdote of a sloth bear that rapes and falls in love with Anja the prostitute – Gustav Berg in a languishing pole dance. She is dressed in a mermaid attire and held captive but is then cynically dumped by the bear. In such scenes, this play’s dark critique of contemporary injustice becomes quite clear.

Otherwise, Anja Suša mostly draws attention to the text’s drastic language, abrupt throws, meta comments and grotesqueness. Nobody is in this play stuck in self-pity or sympathy for others. Maybe this is the realistic image of what the reality actually is. Frightening.

Theresa Benér