3.31.93.

The echo of Lars Norén’s major social panoramas from the 1990s, like The Clinic, En Sorts Hades, and Personkrets 3.1, resonates throughout 3.31.93. But while back then the outcasts, the homeless, the invalid raised their voices, the characters in Norén’s latest play are not linked by any common social denominator or diagnosis. Their losses and their pain are private and yet universal: 25 people from all walks of life are trying to get a grip on their lives, and mostly fail at this. There is a young couple that has lost their child immediately after birth. There is a woman who takes care of her paraplegic husband and enters into a brief and painful, as well as shameful relationship with his father. An elderly couple has to take their grown-up son back into their home. A man is waiting for the train in order to throw himself in front of it. A wife, whose husband does not come home from work … 25 people, whose connection will be gradually revealed and who are held together by a tenuous balance between longing and hope. 3.31.93. is a great accomplishment, a mournful oratory of futility and courage.