Sa Ka La by Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse captures the emptiness of grief and death, how death is always an interruption. With his characters' broken language and repetitive phrases he also convincingly shows the distance between people: how, ultimately, we live and die alone. The play is also very funny, just as Beckett, to whom Fosse is often compared, is always funny, even at his most despairing. The play is in some ways more like music than drama — melodic, somewhat unsettling, and rhythmically delivered, much like a piece of modern chamber music.
The story unfolds in two settings: a flat, where two men wait for their mother-in-law (they married sisters) to arrive for her 60th birthday party, and the hospital room where Mom is dying following a stroke, attended by Nora, her youngest daughter, who found her lying on the floor when she came to take her to the party. Both hospital and party room take place in the same space, so that except for the first scene, we never experience the overlapping comic banter of the brothers-in-law without also seeing the hospital bed at which Nora, pale and shocked, tries to love her sweet mother back to life. Party guests arrive, as do siblings to the hospital. The play's title is not a Norwegian word but Mom's choking attempts at speech.
Director-translator Sarah Cameron Sunde has orchestrated a production full of nuance and rhythm. An effective device is the repetition of the word yeah by every character almost as a verbal tic, standing in for the Norwegian jah, giving the play a distancing feeling, as do the Norwegian names. Marielle Heller as Nora conveys so much with just a look. Brother Ola (Noel Joseph Allain) speaks an aria about the golden light at the moment of death to a seemingly all-business nurse (Jaqueline Antaramian). Her emotional response stands in for that of the audience.
Presented by Oslo Elsewhere at the Green Room/the Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street, 45 Bleecker St., NYC. Sept. 8-27. Thu.-Mon., 8 p.m. (212) 239-6200 or (800) 432-7250 or www.telecharge.com. Casting by Paul Davis.