Hamlet

At the webpage of The Norwegian Theatre the following, among other things, is written about Hamlet (1987):

"Just the collaboration between Winge and Sundquist was the starting point for an interview dramaturge Halldis Hoaas did for the performance program. Stein Winge talked about Bjørn Sundquist:

'The man is not easily accessible, because he is an artist of great format, in force of his mind. He is himself, he hasn't got enough with himself. He is not preoccupied with himself the way many others are. (...) I had to relate to him for real for the first time when there was a crisis with Barabbas due to illness, and Bjørn had to take over Caiaphas at short notice. We started working - it took all of eight seconds, and we were on the same wavelength. No words, no explanations, it was just right for both of us.'

(...)

The same year (1988, Sceneweb's comment) Jo Ørjasæter summed it up in the anniversary book of The Norwegian Theatre's:

'It was a dark interpretation of the drama, full of despairing humour and etching irony, and the very end was an almost too clear underlining of this. For here was no sense of zoning out when the main characters lay dead, no conciliated sense of Sabbath, no feeling that a new and better time is budding. It will only be the old all over again, humans have learned nothing, the wheel of history rolls on, blindly and crushingly. (...) It was Shakespeare as in a magical mirror. And Sundquist was clearly fully aware of it, his Hamlet bent and was broken under the demands made of him, not just to revenge, but to cleanse society of rottenness, to make the world new. He was painfully aware of his lack of powers, and his despair came at times to burlesque expressions. Of the many others Elisabeth Sand's nakedly revealed Ophelia was the one to make the most lasting impression.'
Beside Sundquist and Sand the critics particularly put emphasis on Odd Furøy's Polonius as an impressive role interpretation. Several won praise; Svein Tindberg as Horatio, Vidar Sandem as Laertes, Tom Tellefsen as the leader of the acting troupe - and Trini Lund and Ulrikke Greve as Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern."

SOURCES:

Repertoire at The Norwegian Theatre 1913-2014. Transferred to Sceneweb 08.09.2015.

The Norwegian Theatre, www.detnorsketeatret.no, 22.08.2014, http://www.detnorsketeatret.no/index.php?option=com_play&view=play&playid=166

Einar Dahl's private archive, donated by Einar Dahl, 29.10.2014