Five famous musicians killed in pile-up – Royal Dramatic Theatre

John Ajvide Lindqvist’s play Five famous musicians killed in pile-up, written specially for the performance duo Carina Reich and Bogdan Szyber. A dansband tragedy about the big questions of life, male fellowship, and badgers run over on the road.

With new music, lyrics by John Ajvide Lindqvist and score by Göran Martling.

Five famous musicians killed in pile-up is a kind of warped dystopian sitcom. When we approached John Ajvide Lindqvist early in 2009 to ask about a possible collaboration, neither he nor we knew what the piece would turn into on stage. One concrete result of our dialogue is the badger, which appears in our production as a sort of “undead” figure. It was there in John’s first draft, and when it was later written out of the play for various reasons, we put it back in. For us the badger stands for the irrational and the supernatural, for nature and for revenge.

After 35 years on the road, the dansband Tropicos — a Swedish dance-hall band of the kind that tours community halls and summer parks — is to sum up its career in a live television broadcast. But in the dressing room, the memories of all those years together begin to surface. Did any of it turn out the way they imagined? What happened to all the dreams? And wouldn’t it have been better if they really had driven head-on into that lorry twenty years ago, when the band was at its peak?

“We are the same generation as the gentlemen in Tropicos. Our own work as artists is roughly the same age as the band’s career, and we too — in somewhat different forms — have had our open roads and our cracked windscreens, while Sweden and we ourselves have changed. That is probably our most important key to the play.” — Carina Reich + Bogdan Szyber

John Ajvide Lindqvist had his breakthrough in 2004 with his debut novel Let the Right One In, filmed with great success in both Sweden and the United States.

Cast Jan Waldekranz, Reuben Sallmander, Pierre Wilkner, Magnus Ehrner, Omid Khansari, Olle Jansson
Direction, set and costume design Carina Reich, Bogdan Szyber
Lighting Emma Westerberg
Wigs and make-up Lena Strandmark

World premiere 28 January 2012 at Målarsalen, the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten), Stockholm. Played until 42 times until 4 April 2012.