The anthology of contemporary Nordic drama includes five titles by five authors of the middle and younger generation, written over the last ten years. Maria Blom: The Damned Dalarnians In this play by the Swedish playwright, the Gunilla sisters come together for the first time in a long time on the occasion of their father's seventieth birthday, Eivor and Carina. The first two have spent their entire lives in their native Dalarna, while the third has moved to Stockholm. Their longings, unfulfilled hopes and disappointments, moreover, link them to the three sisters from Chekhov's drama of the same name; the painful emotional confrontation that occurs between them, in turn, evokes to some extent the mixture of love and hate that characterises the relationship between the protagonists of Ingmar Bergman's famous Whispers and Cries. Lars Saabye Christensen: Chet won't play here The chamber drama Chet Won't Play Here, whose title refers to the famous American trumpeter Chet Baker, follows the story of the young saxophonist Daniel, and asks whether or not an artist is entitled to sacrifice his private life and the lives of those around him to art. The Norwegian playwright's way of answering this question is original: while he tells the musician's story from the position of an unbiased observer, the subject of his interest comments on it from the "other shore": by the time the play begins, Daniel has been dead for several hours. Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir: The Parson's Black Dog The Icelandic novelist, poet and playwright here depicts the encounter between a widowed mother and her two daughters, son and son-in-law, which takes an unexpected, tragicomic course. Nasty skeletons fall out of the family closet, causing everyone involved must completely rethink their ideas and opinions. It turns out that nothing is as it seemed. (The play's title refers to an Icelandic saying suggesting that first impressions are often deceiving.) The choreographed entrances, which are an organic part of the piece, contribute to the revelation of how things really are and the true nature of each character. Sirkku Peltol: Finnish Horse The Finnish Horse (2004), a play by Finland's leading contemporary playwright and acclaimed theatre director, is the first part of a loose trilogy (the other parts are titled I'm Not Going to the Garage with My Mother and The Warm-Bloods). It presents a tragicomic picture of the contemporary Finnish countryside, where the rural, family way of life, symbolised by the tenacious Finnish horse breed in the title of the drama, is irreversibly giving way to the spirit of Brussels' bureaucratic bureaucracy, and the young, 'modern' generation, which prefers powerful and fast motorcycles to Finnish horses, is finding it increasingly difficult to find a common language with the generation of their fathers and mothers who still profess traditional values. Jokum Rohde: Pinocchio's Ashes The Danish playwright's play, for which he won the prestigious Reumert Prize for Playwright of the Year, contains elements of thriller, detective story and absurdist and black humour, but with fundamental social themes at the forefront. The author depicts a fantastic, Bradbury-esque, yet not unrealistic world in which art is forbidden. All found works of art are publicly burned at the stake, and those who violate the ban face draconian punishments, starting with the chopping off of a hand and execution...
