{"id":5618,"date":"2014-10-07T10:41:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T08:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/?page_id=5618"},"modified":"2023-06-05T10:29:00","modified_gmt":"2023-06-05T08:29:00","slug":"review-livet-ar-en-schlager","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/press-clips\/reviews-2014\/review-livet-ar-en-schlager\/","title":{"rendered":"“Life is a schlager”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dagen Nyheter 140912<\/strong><\/p>\n

By: JOHANNA PAULSSON<\/p>\n

Review. Skarpn\u00e4ck\u2019s metro sign and brick facades have moved into Cirkus. The orchestra sits perched on the high-rise balconies, and life rolls on as usual before nurse assistant Mona Berglund (Helen Sj\u00f6holm) is thrown into the pop carousel. The musical version of Life is a Schlager<\/em> largely follows the successful movie; key scenes remain despite Jonas Gardell having written both lyrics and a new script.<\/p>\n

That it\u2019s almost 20 years since Peter J\u00f6back and Helen Sj\u00f6holm last stood on stage together in Kristina from Duvem\u00e5la<\/em> is striking. The Swedish private theater audiences are not exactly spoiled with newly written musicals \u2013 especially ones not of the jukebox kind. But if you have Fredrik Kempe as a composer and let him make a song contest cavalcade of hit pastiches – from dance band style to power ballads – you don\u2019t need a string of hits. Then it\u2019s enough with Aldrig ska jag sluta \u00e4lska dig (I will never stop loving you)<\/em> known from the film (with music by Jesper Winge Leisner although that\u2019s not really made clear.)<\/p>\n

Peter J\u00f6back does an in every way glittering performance as Mona\u2019s hit song crazy brother \u2013 the transboundary Candy Darling who partly has a narrative role and is spared from languishing in AIDS, but instead must contend with harassment. Mona is a personal assistant to cerebral palsy David (played by Jonas Helgesson who has cerebral palsy himself) and secretly submits a song that he has written to the Swedish Eurovision Song Contest, becomes a star overnight and forgets all the things that are important in life: friendship, love and honesty. It\u2019s a seemingly sweet story that Gardell successfully combines with blackness, acrid social criticism and celebrity satire.<\/p>\n

That a case of illness in the ensemble has costume designer Christer Lindarw deputize in the mingling role of Jean-Pierre Barda becomes a premiere bonus, but most things are in place. Johan Glans (Mona\u2019s stress joking husband Bosse) laps couplet singing with Kvarteret Skatan <\/em>humour, M\u00e5ns M\u00f6ller finds home as the awful record label mogul and obvious Bert Karlsson paraphrase Tony Borg and Frida Westerdahl\u2019s pop rival Sabina oozes of parodic plasticity. J\u00f6back\u2019s parade number Annars vore jag inte jag (Otherwise I wouldn’t be me)<\/em> is also among the most beautiful things to be heard on the musical stage. It\u2019s a song for all of us who feel we are never good enough, or quite fit in. A song about accepting all the things that makes us who we are.<\/p>\n

In the contemporary superlative inflation, it feels more appropriate to speak of Life is a Schlager<\/em> as genuinely liberating. For this is truly a musical that manages to be both professional and inclusive, amusing and deadly serious at the same time. There might be one or two obsolete humor elements that could have been curbed, but it\u2019s also the dynamic \u2013 the oscillations between tears and laughter – that makes this contemporary tale so strong. Life is not a hit song – life is a very, very wonderful musical by Jonas Gardell.<\/p>\n

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Dagen Nyheter 140912 By: JOHANNA PAULSSON Review. Skarpn\u00e4ck\u2019s metro sign and brick facades have moved into Cirkus. The orchestra sits perched on the high-rise balconies, Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":5119,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5618","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5618\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}