Stockholm. 59E59 Theaters (see Off Broadway). By Bryony Lavery. Directed by Nick Flint. With Richard Saudek, Christina Bennett Lind. Running time: 1hr 10mins. No intermission.
Stockholm: In Brief
One Year Lease Theater Company presents the American premiere of a romantic thriller by British dramatist Bryony Lavery (Frozen). Nick Flint directs.
Stockholm: Theater review by Adam Feldman
Todd (Saudek) and Kali (Lind) may seem like a typical Happy Modern Couple: seeing foreign movies, planning a trip, marking his birthday with a home-cooked dinner. But in Bryony Lavery’s Stockholm, they are a different trope: the Codependent Couple in a Dance of Death, holding each other hostage in their mutual embrace. (In this case, there is lots of literal dancing and stylized movement.) While unreconstructed Britishisms in Lavery’s script yield occasional clunky lines—“A leopard does not change his acne,” says Kali—one can discern a potentially engaging (if short and oddly proportioned) portrait of romantic dysfunction. But our interest in the pair’s push-pull, love-hate dynamic is exhausted early by the telegraphic expressionism of One Year Lease’s production, directed by Nick Flint. Manically intense from the start, Saudek and Bennett show commendable energy and physical control but little ease or chemistry, and they inhabit a set whose gray angularity suggests M.C. Escher—or perhaps some brutalist Dr. Seuss—more than a yuppie dream house. The show pushes too hard to pull you in.—Theater review by Adam Feldman
THE BOTTOM LINE Plenty of stock, not enough home.
Follow Adam Feldman on Twitter: @FeldmanAdam
Follow Time Out Theater on Twitter: @TimeOutTheater