Review: ONCE at Helsingborgs Stadsteater

This is my first visit to Helsingborg Stadsteater but probably not my last. Well-organized and good with lots of free lockers for your jacket and large items. Great  modern theatre auditorium with a excellent grading between the rows in the stalls. 

The musical Once is based on the film of the same name that premiered in 2007. A low-budget film that was a great success. It is about a street musician (the Guy) in Dublin and a Czech single mother (the Girl) who is also a musician. When she hears him playing on the street, she contacts him to get him to invest more in music. But is there more to their relationship or is it just friendship? The plot is based on the meeting between Glen Hansand and Markéta Irglóva, who wrote the music and play themselves in the film.

The film won an Oscar for best song, Falling Slowly, in 2008.

The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 2011 before moving to Broadway. In 2013 it was staged on the West End and in the last months before it closed the lead role was played by Ronan Keating. I have seen it in 2013 and then in 2014 with Ronan in London.

I really like the ambition to stage a musical that has not been performed in Sweden before and to be able to put your own stamp on it.

Here you have had to deviate from the basic concept that it is more intended for smaller stages. The stage of the City Theatre is larger than what Once, for example, was performed on in London and that makes it challenging to achieve intimacy and closeness to the audience. Scenographically it differs as it gives the feeling of a school auditorium more than a pub. For example, in London there was a bar counter placed in the middle of the stage where the audience could order beer or something to drink before the performance and from what I understand the concept was the same on Broadway. The audience's access to the bar on stage created an intimacy between the audience and the ensemble, a feeling of being part of the performance, which is not achieved here.

As soon as the audience takes their seats in the hall, the ensemble also enters one by one and begins to play well-known Irish songs that create a nice atmosphere. The lights in the hall are slowly turned down and Andreas Eldeen (Killen) begins to play his guitar on a street in Dublin. A nice transition to the fact that the musical has now begun.

In Once, the musicians and the ensemble are the same people and on stage more or less the whole time. It is impressive how well they both act and play different instruments. But here too, the large stage means that the distance between the actors becomes greater, especially when they act more like musicians and stand close to the walls, and this reduces the feeling of presence.

The music in the musical is a mix of traditional Irish music and Irish pop music. The Irish should be very evident in the musical and partly it is in this production in the way the music is performed in the ensemble numbers. The Irish feeling shimmers from time to time. But the choice to translate the songs into Swedish and the way they are performed makes it sound more like a Swedish singer/songwriter song with a broken heart theme than the original. Sometimes it tends to sound more like a fight song than a song about a broken heart. The question is whether the feeling is lost in the translation or that it is not conveyed in the performance?

Perhaps the intention is to make an Irish/Swedish crossover in the feeling and then it has succeeded well. The lyrics become more accessible in Swedish, especially as most of the songs are not so well known that you can usually know the lyrics by heart. The need for recognition is simply not as strong as in Joyride or &Juliet, for example. The songs themselves do not advance the plot either, but are more of a "performance" type.

There could have been a little more sparkles between the Guy and the Girl to build the intensity and make the ending a little more poignant. The lack of sparks makes the ending completely logical and the audience need not be disappointed that they did not choose differently. Here it feels more like they wanted to focus on the music creation itself, a strong Irish tradition, where the Girl (Elin Norin) is the driving force and her love for music is strong and she also shines brightest on stage this evening.

For most in the audience, this is the first time they have seen the musical and see it with different eyes than if they had seen it on Broadway or the West End. However, some have probably seen the film, know the story and know that the ending may not be what they expected. For those who are seeing the musical Once for the first time, it will probably be an entertaining musical about a struggling musician with a touch of Ireland. It also provides a reminder that people come into each other's lives for a reason and stay for a period but then part ways and move on with their own.

Once will be played until May 9th.

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