The Showing

At the website of The National Theatre the following, among other things, is written about The Showing:

"When existence dissolves, one may have to create a new reality.

A woman goes to a showing in her own house. She sleeps with the broker in front of her son. The Showing gives an absurd, twisted image of mourning a late husband and father.

Julie is an artist, ready for an exhibition with images from her own life. At the same time she visits the house she has lived in, the house that is about to be sold. But instead of looking at the house as who he is, she claims to be another. Within the erotic role playing everyone goes blind, nobody is able to see what happens. In the heels of Julie her son follows, a little man who can never really grow up.

We are in an art gallery as well as a house for sale. The existence constantly changes, fragile and perishable. Canvases become walls. Everything becomes something else than it seems. The play circles around lies and deception, death and survival. What is really true, what is absolutely not true - and when will it break?

Cecilie Løveid is one of Norway s most significant contemporary playwrights. Løveid's plays are poetic and uncompromised – she has never feared the uncomfortable, sorrow or death; what the rest of us may try to avoid entering. In 1997 The National Theatre housed the world premiere of Løveid s play Austria, and then as now Jon Tombre was the director of the production."

Jon Tombre and Cecilie Løveid won Norwegian Critics' Award for theatre 2013/2014 for The Showing.

Chris Erichsen said the following, among other things, on behalf of Norwegian Critics' Association during the award ceremony:

"There is something about her language. It is somewhat filled up. I have to be well prepared. To have cleaned the room inside of me, so that there is room for me in there, in her language. Perhaps it has something to do with 'the particular tone of broken language', as she writes in Alltid skyer over Askøy (literally: Always clouds above Askøy). Something with the enormous range she is always able to push into her language; from the fully transparent and fragile to the raw and expressive, in one and the same poetic mouthful.

(...)

Some reviewers have criticised the production for being inconsequent in its expression. I would claim that just this inconsequence is part of the strength of the performance. Jon Tombre could have chosen safe and well on the top shelf a thorough expressional effect having led us without resistance through the performance. Instead he, with his ensemble, has chosen the risky way."

The complete speech can be read (in Norwegian only) at the website of Norwegian Critics' Association.

Sources:

The National Theatre, 12.01.2014, www.nationaltheatret.no, http://www.nationaltheatret.no/Visning.b7C_wJLK4r.ips

The National Theatre, forest.nationaltheatret.no, 20.05.2015,  http://forest.nationaltheatret.no/Productions/Details/404ff030-e76a-4111-98aa-4a0e38a931f4

The National Library of Norway, performance program digitised by The National Library of Norway, transferred to Sceneweb 04.12.2014

Import from the Scenekunst.no list of openings, 27.11.2013

Norwegian Critics' Association, www.kritikerlaget.no, 25.09.2014, http://kritikerlaget.no/nor/pages/957-teaterkritikerprisen_201314