le 20 novembre: Swedish Playwright Lars Norén paints a portrait of an all too familiar murderer

Christian Lapointe as Sebastian. Photo: NAC.

A young man stands alone in the acting space and stares at us for few minutes. He is an actor called Christian Lapointe. The acting space is in a rehearsal room at the NAC where the audience is seated on several rows of steeply raked seats watching him perform like a strange animal. He provokes us, he confronts us, he seems confused, angry, aggressive, and under extreme stress. He leaps about on all fours; he licks a dish full of water like a dog. He finally tells us he cannot take this life any more. He tells us he has one more hour to live, the time of the performance. And after that we will see what happens. “We have been warned”. In fact, the news told it all a few days before because this play by Norén, is based on notes and a video made by Sebastian Borre, an 18 year old school boy who made all this information available on line the day before he went into his former school and shot the students and the teachers. All this took place in 2006. The play was written several weeks later.

The subject matter now seems terribly familiar, and it is rather strange that Norén has put his finger on such a grizzly subject that has become so important to us at the present.

How he deconstructs the the mind of this young man is very interesting. Christian not only plays Sebastian, he becomes Sebastian going through a strange transformation that makes us cringe with uneasiness and it was not pleasant to watch. First of all, he mentions how the past of his parents’ weighs heavily on his moral conscience and makes his life unbearable, to the point where he keeps repeating, “I am not a Nazi”. The legacy has burned into his mind and is too much to bear. He represents several generations of young Germans who have had to come to terms with the past and it hasn’t been easy. Certainly Brigitte Haentjens sees the relationship between Sebastian and Ingeborg Bachmann, the young poet who killed herself shortly after the war when she discovered her own father’s past. Haentjens created a magnificent monologue based on Bachmann’s journals entitled Malina, with Anne Marie Cadieux .

However, Sebastian’s malaise takes a different turn because the character turns his anger on all of middle class society. He feels he has been set in the mold of an outcast, an excluded creature rejected by a bourgeoisie that has no place for him and thus it makes his life hell and he is the vicitm. He is burnt out to the point of no return. He opens his mouth to scream and nothng happens.  Words are no longer sufficient. His anger increases his agressivity to the point where he starts confronting members of the audience and asking them simple but personal questions. (What kind of car do you drive? How are you?) The questions seem harmless but the way he asks them is almost an assault on the individual in front of him. He stares at the person with an angry and intensely cold gaze that chills one’s vains to the point where one is tempted to react. The provocation is so real, so strong. …and at that moment the play turned a corner for me.

Until then,  I felt that the actor had almost been transformed into the disturbed young man and his presence made my hair stand on end. It was a very powerful performance.

However, as soon as I realized that there was no place for improvisation in that provocative conversation he pretended to engage in with me, it was clear that all this became  pure theatrical artifice.  The pretence was fore grounded and the hyper–realistic illusion was over.  Reality was no longer possible. Not only did we know how it would end but we also heard the text  become repetitive and the actor followed suit with his  facial expressions,all his  movements,. There was nothing more to look forward to. Something no longer worked.

The theatre of Lars Norén needs a delicate balance of finely tuned emotions, of gestures, of voice tonalities that are as difficult to play as a complex instrument. The psychology is very much on the edge. His creatures are at the limit of their means and in spite of the rage that propels them, are still trying to negotiate a reprieve that will prevent them from falling into  oblivion. Sebastian does not want to hurt his family but that does not deter him from the massacre, from the ultimate act of horror.  However,  by the end, the performance had lost its punch. The  playwright was not able to solve the puzzle of this tortured soul.  He gave us a description of his existence but he did not create any sympathy, nor did he create real understanding for this man. We are left with a sense of ambiguity, in relation to this person as well as a sense of ambiguity in relation to the performance that seems to capture moments that are both intensely real and then so utterly theatrical that the “real” is lost.

This monologue must be seen however because the author is an extremely important Swedish playwright who is almost unknown in Canada. The text is in French with some parts in English. The actor speaks slowly and much is repeated. It is not difficult to understand. Do try to make it..

It plays at the NAC at 8oh0, Le 20 novembre by Lars Norén

Le 20 novembre (November 20), a monologue by Lars Norén

Translation into French: Katrin Ahlgren

Adapted by Brigitte Haentjens, Christian Lapointe, Mélanie Dumont

with Christian Lapointe.

Scenography by Anick La Bissonnière

A production fo Sibyllines, théâtre de création