Triumph for Annika Andersson
Updated 13.40 | Published 13.40
Salt spray and bootleg alcohol
the ramparts, Falkenberg. Director: Pär Nymark, co Annika AnderssonMikael Riesebeck, Ewa Roos, Jojje Jönsson, Jeanette Capocci.
Caught on the web
Krusenstiernska, Kalmar. Directed by Edward af Sillén, with Robert GustafssonOla Forssmed, Eric Ericson, Hanna Hedlund, Martina Sundén.
The hero from Öresund
FredriksdalsteaternHelsingborg. Director: Anders Aldgård, co Eva RydbergClaes Malmberg, Birgitta Rydberg, Robert Rydberg, Fredrik Dolk, Katarina Lundgren-Hugg, Joakim Larsson, Gustav Berg.
Cheers in the bush! The summer of 2026 offers finals and jubilee.
The tradition lives on strong, with old plays and even older fun. The new highlight of the summer can be found in Falkenberg. The newly written farce is among the best performed at Vallarna and a triumph for Annika Andersson.
In Helsingborg says Eva Rydberg farewell to the theater she has nurtured well since 1994. In Falkenberg it is the 30th anniversary of the Stefan & Krister family. In Kalmar, it is the last summer at Krusenstiernska where the audience laughed loudly.
Farces like this are rarely fresh produce, but the content doesn’t have to be a joke. We still laugh at older classics of Shakespeare, Moliere and Feydeau. Human mistakes and stupidities are timeless.
However, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Shakespeare who wrote the rhyme “if I were a night out you’d be my drunken cell”. (It does Niklas Holte and Anders Aldgård at Fredriksdal, in a playful love couplet.)
“The hero from Öresund” does not exactly bring new blood. It’s more like Frankensteining an apparition that has haunted the stages in many guises. It has been called, among other things, “Breast swimming and old age disease” (Falkenberg), “The happy swimmer”, “Fyra bröllö och ett bath” and “Hjälten från Kalmarsund” (Kalmar).
The farce always has a local connection. In this year’s adaptation, it takes place in 1966 around Helsingborg. The time is most noticeable in the clothes and the music. Eva Rydberg and Claes Malmberg excels in some common numbers.
The Krusenstiernska theater in Kalmar started in 2008, in “Borrowed feathers” with Robert Gustafsson. He and Suzanne Reuter and Peter Dalle were very funny in the old farce also played by Eva Rydberg.
Gustafsson previously played this summer’s Kalmar play in Stockholm in 2004. Then he was the stressed-out taxi driver whose double life is about to be revealed. Now have Ola Forssmed the role of a bigamist, while this year Gustafsson plays the friend’s crazy father. “Caught on the Net” is about lies when his teenage children in the divorced families get online contact with each other. The taxi driver forces his resident friend to help and things get worse. People pretend to be someone else, misunderstandings grow, doors work to high pressure.
Sometimes it’s hysterically funny, sometimes most hysterically. It is machined and screwed up Edward of Silléntimed and clear down to the smallest detail with fascinating precision in everyone’s movement. The Father’s Carousel spins faster and faster, but does not move. You mostly get dizzy.
It starts with one lie to cover up and continues with more lies to cover up. The actors are watchable, and Eric Ericson is an entertaining new sparring partner for Ola Forssmed’s acrobatic comic. Robert Gustafsson expertly plays a confused senior in a supporting role. He unleashes his inner kid on green pastures in quick nods to previous kufas he has played.
A lot goes again.
Ewa Roos was fun in Kalmar at Robert Gustafsson’s debut there. Now she is giggling in Falkenberg.
At Vallarna, they have often invested in the newly written. Bus fresh “Saltstänk och smuggelsprit” has a script of Annika Andersson and Pär Nymark. Impressive professional open-air theatre, cleverly written and well acted. Spouses who run a dilapidated beach hotel in Falkenberg have different plans for the day. The man will sell smuggled liquor, the wife will arrange a memorial service for a dead sober man. Confusion and mix-ups. Ewa Roos gives weight to the harsh widow.
Annika Andersson and Jojje Jönsson were already involved in 1996 when “Hemlighuset” started the summer theater at Vallarna. Here they are both excellent and Jönsson manages to find new comic layers with his manifoldly silly character Dag-Otto. Whose work as a hotel maid gives associations to Manuel on Fawlty Towers. At least as good is Mikael Riesebeck in a double role. He is very, very funny and shines even with dizzyingly fast movements and costume changes. Riesebeck plays partly an odd pastor, partly a bath-hungry man named Ragnar who seems to have learned to speak from Linus on the line.
Jeanette Capocci is also a lot of fun as the drama’s romantic engine. Her character Alfrida, like Dag-Otto and Ragnar, has problems with language and wording. She abuses similes and sayings very entertainingly. Everyone in the audience can safely feel that they have a better understanding of most things than the characters.
Vallarna and Falkenberg can look bright to the future if they continue to write equally lustful farces with love for the genre. A hot premiere in every way.
Two finals – but the tradition is carried on. Claes Malmberg takes over in Helsingborg, the Kalmar gang moves to a new stage in Lindö. The beautifully melancholy encore Eva Rydberg sings this summer can give hope of seeing her again with that voice on other stages?
