A Kind of Hades

The locked psychaitric ward, a forecourt to hell. While life outside moves on relentlessly, Norén shows people who dropped out of its order, a panorama of the damaged and the losers: Failed teachers, burned-out managers, a girl that might have been sexually abused by her father, or maybe not, as the invisible is hard to prove. A confused Greek wanders through the room, carrying all his belongings in smelly plastic bags, a Bosnian woman is on the phone, pleading with her husband to flee and take the children, for fear of being murdered – there are reasons for the madness. "A bulky text, providing no consolation, no height of fall, no dramatic development towards moral rehabilitation or political emancipation. It offers nothing but a crass assessment of a normal day in some 'asylum'... What makes for Norén's audacious authenticity of his text is, that he does it completely without the known clichés.» (Theater heute)