Review: EINKVAN, The Coronet Theatre

This review contains spoilers.

This production is a treat. Einkvan (Everyman) is a play about connection, humanity, and intimacy. Written by Jon Fosse – the most performed Norwegian playwright after Ibsen and winner of the Nobel Prize in 2023 – it’s a haunting, longing journey.

The search for compassion and kinship unfolds through parents who try to relate to their sons, to no avail. Blending dramatic practice with contemporary art and live footage, it’s very experimental, very European, and very peculiar. Directed by Kjersti Horn and presented in the original Norwegian with surtitles, it’s a deliciously highbrow, yet raw, experience.

Each dramaturgical choice (by Anna Albrigtsen) is a deliberate resolution of the conflict between symbolism and immediacy. It’s not easy storytelling, with Fosse and Horn both demanding their audience to interpret and translate literally and allegorically. Set designer Sven Haraldsson divides the visuals into sections: two camera-streamed POVs share the top height of what we see, while a translucent plastic curtain, never drawn, occupies the lower half. Extreme close-ups reveal every pore, every line, transmuting the perfection and impurity of the human face into unadulterated emotion.

Layers above layers of language and semiotics stack one upon the other in a complex, simply astonishing hour. From the use of cameras, sophisticated in their proximity to the subjects, to the single decisions in the dramaturgised direction, it’s a joy to see theatre that requires the public to think in order to understand. Horn chooses six actors (Vetle Bergan, Jon Bleiklie Devik, Preben Hodneland, Marianne Krogh, Hilde Olausson, Per Schaanning) that, in pairs, strikingly resemble each other. The consequence for these three sets of doppelgänger is a series of interchangeable realities, to the point where you could potentially distil the six performers into a triangle of roles.

The disconnect between the generations materialises into drapes that never open, no matter how much we wish it did. Relegated to a rectangle, the characters never become wilful bodies in space. The isolation suggested in the live feeds results in deep yearning. The parents crave a relationship with their sons; the sons seek freedom from it. The younger generation refuses to engage, making the older obsess over what they perceive to be unfair treatment.

Carefully calculated video work by Mads Sjøgård Pettersen and Borgar Skjelstad isolates the one-sided conversations and stern glances that ensue, while Erik Hedin's soundscape manipulates the reception of the material. This selective view of the action continues even when the characters brutally invade the other frame, a rare yet affecting twist. While the parents come to terms with the impossibility of ever reaching their respective child again, there’s a distinct shade of homoeroticism in the shared trauma of their offspring. Water, figuratively rippling down from the screens into the blueish curtain below, marries life and death, while the harrowing physical struggle between the son-doubles becomes the key that unlocks the whole piece.

Thematically, Einkvan is a bounty of philosophy, psychology, and existentialism. It’s a project that begs for essays to be written about, to be dissected and laid bare in a forensic exploration of its symbolism. It won't be for everybody, but it will hit the right spot for many.

Einkvan runs at The Coronet Theatre until 17 May.