A dream world of a performance

“When Everyone Sleeps” is a nice show that tells young children that not all scary things are scary. At the same time, it is too short, the story disappears, and that makes it difficult to understand.

"When Everyone Sleeps" is a puppet show mixed with regular theatre at Unge Viken Teater for children around kindergarten age, based on a picture book written by Nicolai Houm and illustrated by Rune Markhus. This is truly a half hour worth taking your child to. 

Playful props

You are picked up by the two actors performing this play, Amalie Ibsen Jensen and Patrick Børjesson. They ask all children and adults to be quiet and to tiptoe. In the performance hall, the children are asked to sit at the front on mats on the floor, while parents are asked to sit at the back on some chairs. The audience is placed in a semicircle towards the stage, we are already inside the world of the story. There are lots of small houses standing around and it is "night" in the city. It turns out that all the characters in this performance are small dolls. It is easy to see what kind of characters the different dolls are, which makes you feel very absorbed in what they are trying to tell. Arm movements, leg movements and talking are detailed. The main character is a little doll girl with childish clothes. Her father is a baker with a moon and a big chef's hat. The mayor of the city is a lady with far too much makeup on. She controls a policeman with the city's biggest mustache.

Then come two big “monsters”. They are two big teddy bears tied to the stomach of the actor Patrick. It feels very much like you are watching a “good morning” episode of children’s television from when you were little. 

Small and large creations

The actors are one of the things that really mattered most in this little performance. You could see that Amalie Ibsen Jensen and Patrick Børjesson had helped develop this little theater world and were passionate about it. Everything from the different sounds that came out of their mouths, different dialects and the way they controlled all the characters went together well. They made the kids laugh and played a lot with the audience by getting them to join in the fun. Patrick made the big monsters give them hugs, while Amalie made the little girl hide behind the audience while she whispered in their ears and got them to hide. The children were also asked to help catch the big monster under a blanket by the mayor. You could see that those who joined in had so much fun. They were so excited that they started attacking the monster with both hands and legs after he was caught. Then you have done a good job of getting the audience involved. 

Entertaining, but difficult to understand

The only negative points I have for this show is that it moves a bit too fast. It was quite difficult to understand what happened when and what kind of message they were trying to convey. It is still difficult to interpret this story straight, even after a good deal of thinking time. In short, it was about a little girl who liked to watch the big monster “Boba” who came to destroy the city every night. When “Boba” was finished, the next monster came and fixed the city after “Boba”. One day, this monster broke his back and was unable to help anymore. Then the mayor decided to catch “Boba” and make sure he never did anything like that again. The end came abruptly and it is difficult to understand whether it was a good ending or if the main character is in danger. All in all, this is the weakest part of the production.

Theater for pure joy

This is truly one of my own favorite types of theater productions in terms of it being straight entertainment. No gray areas where you can easily yawn a little. The show is designed to look away from the real world where something stupid happens that can be painful to think about. This is really what theater is for from my perspective. This may not be for the strict critics who are looking for perfection since this is not made in the most artistic way there is, but for those who need to dream away a little and are looking for a way to entertain their child for a day. There is a lot going on in the world right now and performances like this are perfect. You could see it in the eyes of both the children and the parents that they were enjoying themselves. A good example of how you don't always need stories where everything has to make complete sense. The way I interpreted it, it doesn't seem like everything should make a clear sense, but still convey a simple story, this show did that incredibly well! Dice 5.