A Dress Rehearsal for Pär Lagerkvist's Dvärgen - The Dwarf - at Stadsteatern (Gothenburg City Theatre)

I have been to a lot of plays over the years but not that many dress rehearsals. The ones I have been to have been pretty much the same as going to see the play. That was what I expected at the dress rehearsal for Pär Lagerkvist's Dvärgen, The Dwarf, at Gothenburg City Theatre on September 19th. That is not what we got. After one hour, the director Askhan Ghod stopped the performance, "That's enough. We will stop there." And then he and the sole actor in the play, Jesper Söderblom spoke to us about the development of the script, the acquisition of the rights to perform the play and the preparations for it.

The first thing that the audience sees is the grotesque drawings of Prince Leone, his wife Teodora,  their daughter Angelica, Teodora's lover Don Riccardo, the Prince's arch enemy il Toro among others. The powerful are symbolically large and gradually it becomes apparent that their images reflect the sentiments of the little person at the center of the play (Jesper Söderblom). His ill-fitting, oversized clothes and the props ensure that he seems small in a large world. Söderblom plays the small man with control and contained emotion. He is a powder keg. His voice and mocking reflections transmit a keen intelligence as he vents his distorted view and anger in the shadows.

Lagerkvist wrote the story in 1944 of the observant sly little person who is an all but invisible servant at the Renaissance Court of Prince Leone in Italy. It is written as a diary of reflections. As the director, Ghod wants the performance to reflect this singular perspective of the little person who is shaped by and helps to shape the Court. Born to dismissal and mockery, his anger and resentment is understandable.  He views the world around him with disgust and his role in it with contempt and hatred. He hungers for and hates attention. His story is one of vengeance. He is more than half in love with war and death. The only person he respects is Prince Leone for whom he will commit murder. 

The set is sparse and made to seem like dark wood and stone, the cellar or halls of castle. Gradually it becomes clear that the audience is inside the deformed and malignant mind of a man who is far fram impotent and who is not afraid of taking action. Söderblom shifts how he moves, changes his voice and alters his energy to portray how the others - the Prince, Angelica, Teodora, Don Riccardo, il Toro - appear to 'the dwarf' and then shifts back again to the quiet, dark, twisted ruminations of the man whose energy fills the stage but in a different way. His gaze wants to control not only what but how the audience perceives everyone and everything else around him.

At the dress rehearsal, Söderblom was in costume but not in make-up. The sonic track of the performance was incomplete and we only saw half of the play. Yet what we saw promises a strong and thought-provoking portrait of evil as the product of a warped worldview that asks what could or would this person have been in a different world?