Jon Fosse across the Pond

Jon Fosse, 2023’s Nobel Prize winner in Literature, has in the past been mostly known as a playwright although his work as a writer of fiction, especially in recent years, may have clinched the Nobel for him. Till now his renown and influence as a dramatist in Europe has not had a major impact on his lack of renown in the US and Canada. Even crossing the channel to the UK, which has a similar bias toward linear story-telling and «fully developed» characters has been tough, with some prominent critics roasting his work on their swords. However, he had to his surprise, a breakthrough with I Am the Wind (Eg er vinden) at the Young Vic theatre in 2011.

In the U.S. during that same period, he had a couple of off-Broadway theatre productions in New York. The earliest professional productions of Fosse took place in New York with Natta syng sine sanger (Night Sings its Songs) at 45 Bleeker Theatre in 2004, followed by A Summer Day in 2012 (Ein sommarsdag, 1998). Both productions were translated and directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde.

The latter production featured Karen Allen, known among other things for her roles in the Indiana Jones film franchise, as an obsessed Older Woman at a window looking out at the fjord where her husband was some time ago—or at least we believe—lost while out in his boat, hoping for his return and feeling his presence. (This material is reworked in Fosse’s 2003 novel Det er Ales —in English, Aliss at the Fire (2010)—which itself has had a select readership in English). Theatrically, the Older Woman enacts or relives his presence and their past conflict over his restlessness and inability to be content staying home. Allen got plaudits for her return to the stage and skillfully managing the «repetition» of events and ideas in the play.

Scena theatre, DC

In more recent years several productions by one stubborn theatre company in Washington DC have emerged—with which this writer is acquainted having had the task of doing post-show discussions over 5-6 years. Scena Theatre and its artistic director Robert McNamara have prepared the way to convey Jon Fosse’s stylistic departures from realism by offering audiences a steady diet of Absurdist, post-absurdist, and innovative European theatre for four decades now.

Recently, in November 2023, we did a «talk-back» after a performance of Fosse’s recent play Strong Wind (Sterk Vind, 2021.) Again, it was the third we have done—after Someone Is Going to Come, 2017 (Nokon Kjem til a Komme), and in 2019 The Sea (Hav), all with Scena Theatre in Washington DC, which has championed his work up to now more consistently than any other US company.

Fosse’s more mystic work, which is more readily found in his fiction, the so-called «slow prose» (langsom prosa), with less tension and apprehension, projects like the trilogy, Aliss at the Fire (Det er Ales), his long novel of seven «books» in one sentence Septology. His most recent, involving a lost motorist’s contemplation of a glowing form in a snowy dark wood, is presented in a brief 75-page novela A Shining (Kvitleik, 2023). This last book is immediately available after the Nobel Prize and may be the quickest «way in» to Fosse for American readers.

Laying the groundwork for Fosse’s introduction in the U.S. is a comprehensive and prescient, interview with essayist Merve Emre, that appeared in the New Yorker in in 2022. (11/13/2022). There Fosse explains to an American readership the difference between his writing for theatre which he sees as more intense and perhaps combative than his «slow prose» where he finds a place of security in which he can explore journeys in acceptance and even peace, such as Septology and A Shining.

Other commentator’s work can be easily located for those who are interested. Ben Brantley wrote for the New York Times, on the occasion of the production of A Summer Day in 2012:

«Americans have never been all that eager to embrace the entertainment value of bleak Scandinavian fatalism … But if you’re willing to give yourself up to it, ‘A Summer Day’ exerts a strong but stealthy undertow, a distinctive dramatic momentum unlike any other in New York theater these days.» (NY Times, October 25, 2012)

The fact that this is another version of the material in Aliss at the Fire somewhat contradicts Fosse’s description of receiving his texts in almost finished form as something pre-existing and which then flow without plan. However, when he needs to be he is a master craftsman. In this novel the use of the names Asle and Ales (again in the novel changed to Aliss to avoid her name sounding like «Ales,» as in the drink, in English.) The fact that the names are anagrams of one another and recur – especially in his fiction – and even different beings are named Asle in various books, tends to create the sensation that one is reading about «doubles» in the literary sense. There are two Asles (and a dead Ales) in Septology, with the alter ego or perhaps the «double» of the narrator, also Asle, a fellow painter, the character difference is his debilitating alcoholism – and the dead wife of the central figure being named Ales. The Asle who is the object of the narrator Asle’s concern is debilitated by alcohol addiction. The narrator Asle has meanwhile converted to Catholicism. As both are brought together in the story of Fosse’s own life is perhaps a motive for a merging of the two in the novel.

Scandinavian stereotypes

Again, as regards the plays, in 2014 Brantley had covered I am the Wind (Eg er vinden) for the Times. The production took place at 59E59 Theatre near Central Park, directed by Paul Takacs and translated by Simon Stephens. It featured Christopher Tierney and Louis Butelli playing «One» and «The Other.» Here Brantley wrote:

«Mr. Fosse has regularly been compared to Samuel Beckett. But he doesn’t have Beckett’s playful humor. To me, I Am the Wind and A Summer Day, the only other play by Mr. Fosse I’ve seen, suggest more a combination of the young Eugene O’Neill, in his brooding sea plays, and Ingmar Bergman at his starkest.» (NY Times, Jan. 16, 2014)

Though he clearly was approaching Fosse’s work for stage with an open attitude, Brantley seems to betray a stereotype or two about Scandinavian artists and audiences.

Scena Theatre in Washington DC began its work with Fosse plays in 2017 with Someone is Going to Come. The circularity of the dialogue led to comparisons with Theatre of the Absurd, and the air of menace as in Harold Pinter’s plays. Nanna Ingvarson as «She» and David Bryan Jackson as «He» captured the absurdist circularity, of the dialogue. The visitor/seller of the property Joseph Carlsson was guided by director McNamara to convey a Pinteresque sense of menace. Washington City Paper suggested there was more minimalism in the action than we have with Pinter, as his main stage action was drinking a beer. Another key object of concern was the chamber pot left in the cabin the couple seek to live in.

The joys of not knowing

For Scena’s second production in 2019 Washington City Paper, Sea (Hav), reviewer Ian Thal summed up the events—in which a couple, a commander of an invisible ship and a guitarist, who seems to be playing air-guitar, seek out recognition of an older couple who discuss having estranged offspring, though none of the others get the «heartfelt reunion» they are seeking from this elderly pair wandering the void. The City Paper reviewer found the following anecdote revealing.

«During the post-show reception in the front gallery of the DCAC, one of the actors could be overheard remarking, perhaps impishly, ‘I’m interested in other people’s interpretations, because I don’t know what it’s about.’ Perhaps that is the secret to Fosse’s inability to replicate the popularity he has in Europe: English-speaking audiences don’t fully appreciate the joys of not knowing what it’s about.’» (City Paper, Nov. 14, 2019)

My own observation in the post-show discussion was that as the play moved toward its culmination, all the characters dance to the music they «hear» being played (soundlessly) by the air guitarist—giving a light touch to this theatre piece with individual souls dancing and snaking their way around the stage on their paths that are in this world It is Fosse’s mysticism («mystikken» in Norwegian) pouring forth in a play, rather than the Christian mysticism of his «slow prose» fiction works of recent years. As such, it left one with a feeling of delight and uncertainty simultaneously. In that regard, the play seemed to be an exception.

Strong Wind 2023

Currently running in DC, is the third production by McNamara and Scena Theatre, Strong Wind. It is a recent play and, here one looks in vain for the sort of «peace» Fosse says he strives for in his fiction, according to the New Yorker interview with Merve Emre. Returning to theatre seems to be for Fosse largely a return to a depiction of angst. Divided into at least two parts, the first section of the play is concretely that of the Man, played with a physicalized sense of puzzlement by Stas Wronka (in a standard Fosse staging he is looking out of a window). He addresses the past, the future, and the present—which is only a «wink» or «blink»: two words he proceeds to obsessively compare and contrast. He somehow finds himself in the new home to which his wife moved while he was «away». And voila, she emerges in her new space. But so does her new lover the Young Man.

Fosse has in the past underscored a very clean and direct understanding of the general dynamics of theatre. Two or more people are there. Someone comes. Jealousy is aroused. And the drama begins. In Strong Wind, however, the central character arrives in a new living space, his wife is there, and the «intruder» is already there. Then the final scenes become about the idea that «someone is going to leave.»

The Man now concludes he «has always lived here.» He claims the space, and the lover must go. But as in his former building, they are now at a window on the 14^th floor, and as the window opens to a cold wind, if he leaves it will be a cosmic leap—much as is the case for Fosse’s men who go over the edge of boats and down into the depths of the fjord or sea.

This play does not lack humor—as when to the protests of the Man the Young Man begins biting the toes of the Woman. Up to this point, Sissel Bakken plays the Woman as distant and defensive, conveying the sense that she truly lives in a distinct space from her husband. Robert Sheire as the Young Man joins her in showing the most minimal acknowledgment of the Man’s presence—until they both simultaneously acknowledge him. But their ignoring the Woman’s husband in a sensual scene in which the lover commences to bite the woman’s toes, aroused some laughter in the audience, a sign that Fosse has hit upon a key element of the essential nature of jealousy

Whether Fosse, who has now collected the highest international laurels, will be understood, or accepted across the pond, where audiences invest their interest either in realist performance, or the maximalism of the genre of the Broadway Musical, will soon show. For now, one imagines a general program of Fosse productions may be revving up. The question remains as to whether his work can succeed in breaking through American preconceptions of what a night in the theatre should be about.

(Published Sunday, Decembre 10th. 2023)

Joe Martin is playwright, dramaturge and Universty teacher, and a regular contribtor to Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift

English translations cited above:

The Sea. London, Oberon Books, 2014.

Strong Wind. Production, Washington DC, Scena Theatre, 2023.

Translation: May-Brit Akerholt

Someone is Going to Come. London: Oberon Books, 2004.

Translation: Gregory Motton.

Aliss at the Fire. London: Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.

A Shining. Berkely, 2023.

Septology. Berkely: Transit Books, 2019 – 2021.

Translation: Damion Searls

A Summer Day. Cherry Lane Theatre, NY, October 2012.

Night Sings its Songs. 45 Bleecker St. Theatre, 2004.

Translation: Sarah Cameron Sunde