Stockholm

All is not what it appears in Bryony Lavery’s Stockholm – a play about a young ‘immaculately turned out’ couple on the eve of their romantic trip to Stockholm. Directed by Carl Whiteside, Stockholm is about couple Kali (Amy Bradney-George) and Todd (Seton Pollock), who are attractive, energetic and sufficiently cultured.

When we meet them, they’re fresh from seeing Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal in preparation for their Stockholm trip. Today is Todd’s birthday, and tomorrow they will be going to Stockholm. We know this because, aside from being enraptured with each other, Kali and Todd tell the audience about themselves as though they’re a separate entity. For instance, when Todd steps onto the stage to commence the play, he introduces the main characters as a benevolent narrator might. It’s a neat trick, one that deftly manages to introduce backstory where there are only two characters and one set, as both Kali and Todd can break off into a story about themselves as if they are an old friend while interspersed with dialogue with the other person on stage. A good way to examine the image of the self, as – it becomes increasingly more obvious – Kali and Todd’s facade is not all it appears.

For the most part, the couple appear to be more annoyingly in love. They crack each other up with Swedish chef jokes, and break out into dance at a moment’s notice. They put on music to liven up the drudgery of putting groceries away. They have oral sex in the kitchen, Todd all the while explaining the architectural choices that went into their recent kitchen renovation. Kali winkingly tells the audience that she purchased an expensive bottle of wine for Todd’s birthday as a surprise. We’re in on the joke. We’re just unsure how far it will go. 

Things begin to unravel with the insistent punctuation of the telephone’s ringing. Todd won’t answer a call from his mum and dad, and Kali can’t stop needling him over it. As Todd is preparing to cook a special birthday dinner, he tries to sneak out under the guise of picking up an ingredient to make a call, but Kali bullies him into staying. In the meantime, she has absconded with his phone so that he has no to comply with her wishes, and ends up going through his call log, snagging on a missed call from a woman named Louise.

And that’s when it really starts to unravel. In amongst the good vibes and showboating are a pair of very unhappy individuals. Kali hands Todd his phone back, and proffers the birthday wine, downing a champagne flute in one big gulp. Todd, we realise, is afraid of her. All is not what it appears. 

Stockholm is an ambitious and tightly wound examination of intimacy and what goes on behind closed doors. In this iteration, actors Bradney-George and Pollock do admirable work with their behaviour, although their British accents often wilt under the material. The sound design and lighting is often stark, and creates a foreboding scene even when the lovers are still zipping and trailing each other along the stage. The choreography is worth mentioning too – you can imagine choreographers Shamita Sivabalan and Joshua Bell working hard to create a fluidity with the actors that is truly vibrant on stage.

If you have the chance, go see Stockholm. It’s an imaginative modern story about intimacy that will leave you pondering.

Stockolm
MC Showroom, 1/48 Clifton Street, Prahran, 3181
Till Sunday, 7 December 2019
themcshowroom.com/event/stockholm