Lars Norén

In 'Guerre' ('War') by the Swedish author and director Lars Norén, we are confronted with the devastating consequences of war, illustrated by a family history. Physical and mental misery, rape and deprivation are the fate of the three female protagonists. A mother stays behind with her two girls, aged eleven and fifteen, when her husband goes to war. Her eldest child turns to prostitution (and drugs) to earn money so that she can escape to Germany as soon as possible. The youngest girl, a lucid and sinister character, anything but childlike, plays a provocative and cruel game. The mother believes her hated husband is dead and starts an affair with her brother-in-law, an introspective and irresolute intellectual. Then, after two years, her husband returns. He is blind. Lars Norén's directing strips the story of pathos, frills and artifice. Theatre as a quiet and restrained manifesto.