About the work
"Andante" is a play by the Swedish dramatist Lars Norén about old age, memory and farewell. It is the first movement of a trilogy on ageing whose other parts had premiered earlier: "Vintermusik" in 2017 at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern in Stockholm and "Poussière" in 2018 at the Comédie-Française in Paris. Norén himself directed the world premiere on 1 March 2019 on the Lilla scenen of Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) and also co-designed the set and costumes.
Plot
The play is set in a home for the elderly, conceived as a final room: a group of people who did not choose one another still cling to old hierarchies and class differences. The characters, identified only by letters – a former doctor with dementia and her unforgiving husband, an architect, along with a worker and a woman writer with memories of Paris – circle around fragments of memory, half-forgotten quotations and old grievances. A daughter and a son-in-law come to visit, both wanting to get on with their own lives. Norén described the play's course as a path from realism into nightmare.
Cultural significance
The title alludes to the slow movement of a musical work. With its nameless characters and its preoccupation with time and death, the play is representative of Norén's late work. Swedish critics compared the premiere to the stillness of Beckett's figures and to Harry Martinson's "Aniara", noting that Norén strings together moods and small incidents instead of a continuous plot.