Hedda Gabler – the doomy tragedy, the one with the pistol, the “female Hamlet”. We all know the score when it comes to Ibsen. All, that is, except apparently for Sheridan Smith, who recently admitted in an interview that she hadn’t heard of the play before she was asked to take on the lead.
Despite Lilyhammer’s sub-zero, snow white Norwegian setting, it is initially difficult to divorce Frank Tagliano from The Sopranos’ Silvio Dante. They’re both played by Steven Van Zandt and both are Mafia men. The suit they wear is the same. Yet Lilyhammer is not The Sopranos in Norway and, by plonking this stereotype into the most unlikely of locations, Van Zandt reveals a flair for nuance formerly obscured by the shadows of others.
It’s a standard dilemma in film. What to do with the body? In this case, the answer can be seen coming but when it does, it isn’t one that could have occurred outside the world created for the otherwise all too generic Jackpot.
Iceland’s kings of heavy metal Momentum are launching into an assault called “The Creator of Malignign Metaphors”. It’s broad daylight and they’re playing about 10 meters from the kitchen window of a suburban-looking house. The stage is sited on an AstroTurf football pitch, with one of the goals pushed to the side of it. On the opposite side, kids are shimmying down a blow-up slide. Very little about G! conforms with the standard festival experience.
It could have been a cow lowing in the distance, the sound drifting across a barren landscape. Its tone transformed after echoing through hillsides and ravines. Actually, it was Karl Seglem blowing into the horn of a goat. Suddenly, he stopped and began wordlessly chanting. The other two musicians on stage at St Luke's kept their heads down and continued providing the sonic wash knitting together this collaboration between the classical, jazz and uncategorisable.
Although tinged throughout with blue, the Norwegian drama King of Devil’s Island is so grim it might as well be grey. Basing it on real events pitches the film as a cautionary tale, but the message is hard to determine. Everything shies away from explanation. Norwegians might have the context, but the rest of us need to fill in the gaps.
Edvard Munch strikes a heroic pose. Buck naked, he’s pointing a sword at the sky – or perhaps that’s just a stick he’s picked up in the garden, where he’s surrounded by dense greenery as he stands with his arm raised in a taut diagonal. Perhaps he is dreaming of Gram, the Norse Excalibur, and himself as Sigurd.
“This is such fun”. Martin Horntveth, Jaga Jazzist’s drummer, can’t contain his excitement. Standing up behind his kit, he radiates joy. Considering that he and his band are Norwegian, typically not given to overstatement, what he describes as fun would be off the pleasure scale by non-Nordic standards. The meeting of Jaga Jazzist and The Britten Sinfonia was an unqualified success, one of those rare one-off concerts where band and their temporary collaborators seamlessly connect.