Great review of “Crooners”!

NIE premiered the production “Crooners” at Palac Akropolis last week.
Although the title immediately evokes a film from the 1930s, and especially the musical era of jazz vocalists with their velvety-modulated voices, along with jazz big bands led by charismatic singers, this staging offers a musical-poetic storytelling. The emotional core of the production is formed by a shared male intimacy, as the creators delve deeply into the relationships between fathers and sons, intertwining music and words.

On the stage of the Prague theater, a “sandpit” with raised wooden edges was set up. The massive frame used for the stage served as a meeting place for the performers, representing a springboard to dive into the roots, the metaphorical inner workings of family history, generally into the “unventilated cabinets filled with dusty skeletons” of ancestral lineage.

The symbolically rich loose material in the enclosed backdrop primarily provided an opportunity to transition organically, yet mosaic-like, between different time periods of human life. In this case, it transitioned from the sudden disappearance of a father when his son was eleven years old to the eventual embrace of both men, now an adult son and father, years later. Whether referencing a child’s play in the sand or dusty memories calling for stirring or raking, reviving long-gone moments, or drawing parallels to folk proverbs about sifting sand between teeth or sifting life through fingers, burying one’s head in the sand, or writing in it, the structured simplicity of working with the material exhibited a certain purity, providing ample space for personal interpretation.

In its original meaning, “Crooners” was characterized by a close relationship with the microphone, allowing the emotional subtext to resonate more authentically, enabling the listener to perceive nuances of emotionally tinged faltering in the voice. The trio of musically accomplished performers, through their collective music-making, opened the weighty theme of masculine identity, layered with the sediment of historically formed prejudices, while simultaneously evoking a relaxed atmosphere of a jazz bar, where a suit and tie were the mark of a man.

With a loose connection to American culture of the mid-20th century, the narrative also presented the motif of a natural fear of war, loudly condemned for its senseless destruction of humanity for power reasons, perceived by the “ordinary” person as something so irrationally incomprehensible. NIE often draws on memories to illuminate the alarming motivations of the present. In a subtly evocative manner, this performance awakens a commitment to the quest for a better world through examples from the past, at least in terms of breaking into tabooed chapters. To achieve this, they do not hesitate to reference diaries or describe environments that inherently bring a whiff of naphthalene, where the shadows of existentialism and utopia vibrate in imagination and where hope must inevitably shine through, or at least a spark must strike.

In the flow of time, organized chronologically as a reality, the creators touched on the obsession with gathering and subsequently excavating the past to answer today’s questions, while constantly feeling the pressure of the impending future. From the tight grip of harrowing secrets, from the disappearance of the father to more mysterious matters, acceptance emerges as one of the meaningful pathways to self-discovery, with forgiveness, respect for the given state, and appreciation of the individual’s uniqueness accompanying it.

The production “Crooners,” utilizing the means of simple musical-symbolic verbal theater, aims at a horizon to which it builds a ladder made of intensely experienced moments centered around a character; a boy who matures into a desire to break free from the behavioral patterns of his bloodline predecessors. The whole is marked by a Nordic modesty infused with Slavic nostalgia and a hint of mythology.

Directed by Kjell Moberg, with a burning desire to discuss the masculinity passed down through generations, and since such projects are few, this one emerges almost as “essential reading” (not just) for boys, men and fathers…
An hour with three splendid musicians and performers instills hope, as it has the potential to gently open the doors to long-standing family silence.

“Crooners” by NIE

Directed by Kjell Moberg,
Set design and costumes by Katja Ebbel.
Light design by Christian Paulsen.
Produced by Iva Moberg.
Featuring Nils Oortwijn, Helder Deploige and Václav Kalivoda.
Czech premiere at Palac Akropolis, Prague January 26 and 27.2025

The review was published in Divadelni Noviny by Hana Strejčková
11.2 2025. The translation is made with AI