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Per Olov Enquist. Bildmakarna. Stockholm. Norstedts. 1998. 143 pages. 210 kr. ISBN 91-1-300462-X.
One of the highlights of the 1998 season at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm was Ingmar Bergman's staging of Per Olov Enquist's new play, Bildmakarna (The Picture Makers). Performed on one of the theater's more intimate stages, the play brings together four artists on the occasion of a showing of the masterpiece in progress, the silent film K'rkarlen (The Phantom Chariot or Carriage). These four-the director and actor Victor Sjostrom; Selma Lagerlof, writer and winner of the Nobel Prize, whose tale served as the basis for the film; the actress and vamp Tora Teje; and the cinematographer Julius Jaenzon-meet, clash, and attempt to seduce one another within the confines of the projection room.
With its limited cast of characters and single confined setting, Bildmakarna has many of the ingredients of the Strindbergian chamber play, except that the harmonies or correspondences at stake in Enquist's work have much...