For a few years ago, the duo made an apathetic and politically depressed Hamlet whose stepfather and uncle were remarkably similar to Donald Trump. This spring, they will put up their newly written version of "Misantropen" (26/3) and this time they have chosen a furious main character.
Alceste is on the warpath against hypocrisy and human wickedness, notes Hannes Meidal.
Their play takes place in a fictional castle and at a court whose members claim to strive for all people to be equally valuable.
Claes Månsson was persuaded by Meidal and Ohlin to make a comeback as the marginalized king Jonas who was forced to abdicate.
I have an ankle with arthrosis and cannot run around. That's why I haven't played theater in several years. But I'm really looking forward to this, says Claes Månsson and tells that he has even been promised a wheelchair if it should be needed against all odds.
Tage Danielsson
Hannes Meidal and Jens Ohlin have themselves written a new, rhyming text based on Molière's 17th-century comedy about the worst sides of humans. It was the duo's own pessimism over the development of the present that led them to the French playwright. But in the back of their minds, they also had Tage Danielsson's poem about the duty not to fuel the world's misery.
Should we let this hard time harden us? Or must we actually keep hope in a hopeless time? That's probably what we based it on, says Jens Ohlin, who means that hope is still present in the performance, not least in the rhyming verse - a kind of counterweight to Alceste's pessimism, he thinks.
But it also exists in Alceste's mother Vivianne, "a kind-hearted person" who speaks in naive statements that you would like to believe in, emphasizes Jens Ohlin, whereupon Hannes Meidal fills in:
She has a creed: the world becomes what you shape it to be.
Total catastrophe
Among the returns this spring at Dramaten is also Helena Bergström as the mother in Alex Schulman's newly written play where the adult sons' Mother's Day celebration ends in total catastrophe (24/1).
The feminist stage collective ÖFA has also written new based on the porn film "Fäbodjäntan" (6/3) and promises a performance about body, desire and cultural canon.
Among the spring premieres is also "Rage" (31/1) by the Swiss director and playwright Milo Rau, which takes place in "a near future" where right-wing extremists have won the election.
Premieres in selection:
"Mother's Day" by Alex Schulman, premiere 24/1.
"Rage" by Milo Rau, who also directs, premiere 31/1.
"In the loneliness of the cotton fields" by Bernard-Marie Koltès. Staffan Valdemar Holm directs, premiere 28/2.
"Fäbodjäntan" by Amanda Apetrea, Lisen Rosell, Nadja Hjorton, Daniel Åkerström-Steen and Chrisander Brun, premiere 6/3
"Misantropen" by Jens Ohlin and Hannes Meidal, premiere 26/3.
"Solaris" by Annika Nyman after Stanislaw Lem's novel. Gustav Englund directs, premiere 16/4.
"Loop" by Björn Säfsten, dance performance for people with intellectual disabilities, premiere 24/2.
"Discovery site: Dramaten" Linn Hilda Lamberg and Stefan Åkesson invite middle school children to interpret objects in Dramaten's storage of props, premiere 17/4.
