This content is protected against AI scraping.
Today was full of packing and preparation, while tonight was like attending a rave in a warehouse. At least it felt like a rave in a warehouse would probably be like. Having never actually been to a rave in a warehouse, or anywhere else, I only have examples from television where young people pop pills and drink water while being inundated with very loud beats.
The packing and preparation was for Mirinda’s impending trip – she is off to London to meet Fi tomorrow and, of course, the packing started this morning. But that was not that exciting, whereas tonight was definitely pretty wild.
A while ago, Nicoline had suggested we all go to see a show at the Stockholm Kulturhuset. She told us it would be crazy with the audience sharing the stage with the performers. It would be mad, she promised.
There was a bit of madness with the tickets, booking and dates, but I’m not going to dwell on that. Suffice it to say that we went. That’s enough. It was definitely worth it.
We met at Artes, our tapas destination in Stockholm, where Mirinda ordered for me, something that Ncioline thought was a bit strange. She was assured by us both that this had only ever happened once before, that I would generally not let anyone order for me. But, Artes is Mirinda’s regular haunt and, besides, she knows what I like.
After dinner we headed up the road to the theatre. On the way, Nicoline told us how, in the past, she would put her ‘outerwear’ in the cloakroom and ask the attendant to drape it over a chair about five minutes before the end of the show. That way she, and other canny audience members, would be ahead of the queue and get out all the quicker for it.
Sadly, there were no chairs for Mirinda to do the same. She put her coat in the cloakroom. Here she is stepping off the escalator before the off.
The result of this action was that we had a long wait at the end while Nicoline waited for us at the entrance to central station. Nicoline, I should add, didn’t put her outerwear in the cloakroom at all.
But enough of that. What about the show? Well, it was not what I expected…not that I really knew what to expect.
It was about DJ Avicii, someone I had never heard of before. Mirinda only knew the name because the Ericsson globe was renamed Avicii in 2020. And she only knew that because she went to the ice hockey there earlier in the year.
Now for anyone who didn’t say, “How could you possibly not know who Avicii was?“, he was a very famous DJ who made a lot of people deliriously happy with his music. And he was world-famous too, not just in his home town of Stockholm. And Rita Ora (who I didn’t know until we watched Too Much about a month ago) released his song Lonely Together to international acclaim.
For all his songwriting skill, appeal and generosity of spirit, Avicci struggled with mental health issues. Sadly, he took his own life in 2019, leaving a lasting legacy of some amazing music. He also left behind a collaboration with Fredrik “Benke” Rydman, a Swedish choreographer who decided to celebrate his friend with the show, Lonely Together.
On the surface, the production concerns a group of strangers who have their own, individual problems; secrets if you will. They share them with each other and the audience as they dance and sing to Avicii’s music.
The show was electric, full on and refused to flag for even a moment. As I sat in the back of the theatre (there was no standing on the stage for me) I wished I was down there with the majority of the audience. They looked like they were having an excellent time. Particularly the little girl who was lifted up to dance with one of the performers.
The show was brilliant, the performers exceptional, the concept wild. I enjoyed it very much. In fact, the only thing that I didn’t like was how we, in the back three rows of the auditorium, were cut off because of the staging and direction.
In effect, the piece was performed in the round. But, the direction had everything played to the group on the stage. This made us feel isolated and, as Nicoline said, like the grandparents watching from the back of a hall while the kids have fun. It didn’t help that the rest of the auditorium in front of us was just a sea of empty seats.
That’s exactly what it looked like from my seat. The on stage audience was behind the structure on the apron. As I said, we felt like casual observers rather than connected.
Still, that was only to be expected, I guess. The entire concept was, I think, to feel the rawness of a club night with pounding music and an extraordinary lighting show. Actually, the lighting was truly amazing. It was like another cast member. And huge. There were a lot of lights.
Overall, the dancing was excellent, the singing superb, the stories in Swedish. Well, except for the guy from Berlin who watches too much porn. I don’t think he could speak Swedish. The songs, on the other hand, were all in English which helped. The other thing that helped was Nicoline and her handy translations, whispered in my ear every now and then.
As she said, it meant I understood about 20% of the story. Which is a good deal better than nothing but the music.
It would be fair to say that, with or without the story, I enjoyed the show very much. As a celebration of a life cut ridiculously short, it was superb.
My only reservation was the way that suicide felt to me, like it was being celebrated, at the climax of the show. I’m not sure about that.
There was also some weird shit that I couldn’t possibly understand but, overall, the show was brilliant. The dancers, the musicians, the technical people, the whole shebang.
Thank you, Nicoline. I loved it.
