Stockholm OFF-BROADWAY REVIEWS

• NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF Stockholm

  

  Brittle Beauty Can Be Picture Perfect Until, of Course, It Cracks: ‘Stockholm,’ by Bryony Lavery, Dissects a Marriage

  Ben Brantley

  March 12, 2014: Couples in toxic relationships aren’t usually people you would choose to hang out with. Who wants to be caught in the crossfire of flying recriminations and possibly family china? Safely quarantined in a play, though, bad couples can be fun couples, their car-crash marriages the stuff of riveting theater. Just consider the hours of prickly pleasure provided by those nasty Macbeths, or Edward Albee’s George and Martha, or the squabbling spouses in Strindberg, Ibsen and O’Neill. Now allow me to introduce you to Kali and Todd, the attractive young couple in Bryony Lavery’s Stockholm, which opened on Wednesday night at 59E59 Theaters. Portrayed by Christina Bennett Lind and Richard Saudek, Kali and Todd at first register as merely annoying. They’re one of those cute, chic twosomes who are so into each other’s fabulousness that you wish they’d just get a room — and stay there.

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• NEW YORK POST REVIEW OF Stockholm

  

  ‘Stockholm’ more compelling as a syndrome than this play

  Frank Scheck

  March 13, 2014: The sexy young couple in Stockholm seem made for each other. Attractive and fit, they dance joyously and indulge in torrid (offstage) sex before he whips up dinner. As they prepare for their vacation in the city of the title, they speak in mock Swedish dialogue inspired by Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. But it’s soon clear that things between Todd (Richard Saudek) and Kali (Christina Bennett Lind) are far from idyllic. Trapped in a codependent, abusive relationship, they could be suffering the kind of traumatic bonding known as Stockholm syndrome. And their dancing is a literal manifestation of August Strindberg’s similarly dysfunctional couple in The Dance of Death.

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• THEATERMANIA REVIEW OF Stockholm

  

  Stockholm: Something is rotten in the state of Sweden in Bryony Lavery's two-hander about a dysfunctional relationship.

  Zachary Stewart

  March 13, 2014: Choosing a partner for a long-term relationship is not about discovering "The One," that magical unicorn of a person who fulfills all your hopes and dreams. It's about finding a person whose neuroses don't clash too severely with your own. That's one of the lessons of Bryony Lavery's Stockholm, now making it's New York City debut at 59E59 Theaters in a production by One Year Lease Theater Company. The UK-based Lavery (2004's Frozen) has a clever handle on language and interpersonal relationships, but too much of the story gets lost in translation in this partially Americanized mounting.

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• STAGE AND CINEMA REVIEW OF Stockholm

  

  Off-Broadway Theater Review: STOCKHOLM (One Year Lease Theater Company at 59E59 Theaters)

  Paulanne Simmons

  March 11, 2014: Stockholm Syndrome is a form of traumatic bonding in which hostages develop an irrational sympathy for their captors. The term refers to a robbery in Stockholm in which bank employees who were held hostage in a vault for six days not only rejected government assistance, but actually defended their captors after release. Stockholm, by British playwright Bryony Lavery, illustrates this psychological condition through its unsparing story of a young couple caught in a mutually destructive relationship. The play, which premiered in Plymouth seven years ago, has been produced several times in the U.S. and is now making its New York City premiere at 59E59 Theaters, presented by One Year Lease Company and directed by Nick Flint.

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• THEATRE IS EASY REVIEW OF Stockholm

  

  Stockholm

  Jason Rost

  March 12, 2014: Stockholm is a city synonymous with peace and calm in the modern world. It's a place that brings about white sterile imagery of Ikea furniture and clean streets. It's where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. It is also reminiscent of "Stockholm Syndrome," when hostages begin to empathize with their captors. In Bryony Lavery's darkly exhilarating play Stockholm, both references co-exist in a domestic cycle of love, violence and sex. As stylistically directed by Nick Flint and choreographed by Natalie Lomonte, the New York City premiere of this 2007 British play is a thrilling and disturbing medley of poetry and dance.

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