Fallen angel

“Love should not be attempted to be explained. But what would we be if we did not try?”

The performance Nedstörtad ängel is a fascinating journey through one of P.O. Enquist’s most significant novels. With a tapestry of different stories, the performance attempts to encapsulate the incomprehensibility of love and what it means to be human.

We meet one of Bertolt Brecht’s discarded mistresses, the actress Ruth Berlau, in a hospital in New York. Pasqual Pinon, the man with two heads, found in a copper mine in northern Mexico and later exhibited as a monster at a fairground. An inseparable couple in Uppsala, whose love is completely impossible to comprehend. And a confined young boy, “The Wolf of Säter” – a child murderer whose terrible and irrevocable act echoes through time.

All these characters converge with a solitary narrator, who in the first light of dawn watches the lake while feverishly filling his diary with code words. It will be revealed that they all; Ruth Berlau, Pasqual Pinon, the couple, the boy, and the solitary man, are set to solve an immense task together. Under the wordless song of the sky harp, we travel through the innermost essence of humanity – from a green wooden house in Västerbotten to the endless ice expanse at the poles.

It is a captivating story about a very special kind of love: Agape – the unconditional, selfless, and forgiving love that does not need to be earned. What a beautiful word. In 2008, Maria Lundström directed Nedstörtad ängel at the Sirius Theatre in Helsinki. For Östgötateatern, a completely new stage version is now being created with a new artistic team.