Plays One: Someone is Going to Come / The Name / The Guitar Man / The Child

by Jon Fosse, Louis Muinzer (Translator), Gregory Motton (Translator)

Author of novels, poetry, essays and books for children, as well as award-winning plays, Jon Fosse is a leading Norwegian writer whose work has been translated into a number of languages and performed throughout Europe. Fosse’s unique style, at once poetic and naturalistic, magnifies the love and pain of ordinary people. He won the Ibsen prize for his play The Name, which is included in this collection along with Someone is Going to Come, The Guitar Man, and The Child.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Nobel Prize, Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 2002

About the author

Jon Olav Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway and currently lives in Bergen. He debuted in 1983 with the novel Raudt, svart (Red, black). His first play, Og aldri skal vi skiljast, was performed and published in 1994. Jon Fosse has written novels, short stories, poetry, children's books, essays and plays. His works have been translated into more than forty languages. He is widely considered as one of the world's greatest contemporary playwrights. Fosse was made a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France in 2007. Fosse also has been ranked number 83 on the list of the Top 100 living geniuses by The Daily Telegraph.

He was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable".

Since 2011, Fosse has been granted the Grotten, an honorary residence owned by the Norwegian state and located on the premises of the Royal Palace in the city centre of Oslo. The Grotten is given as a permanent residence to a person specifically bestowed this honour by the King of Norway for their contributions to Norwegian arts and culture.

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology collects four of the early plays from our latest Nobel Prize winner, who is actually thought of more as a playwright in his native Norway than a novelist. Short reviews and individual ratings below.

Someone is Going to Come: 3.5

Fosse's first stage work, it's a little wobbly and bears unmistakable hints of Beckett, Pinter and, of course, Ibsen. But also contains the germ of mature Fosse's style: short repetitious lines of dialogue, characters breaking off mid-sentence and others finishing their thoughts. There isn't much plot - a couple comprised of an older man and younger woman move into an old, dilapidated house by the sea, and the man becomes obsessed thinking his woman would prefer the younger former owner of the house to himself.

The Name: 4.5

Fosse's third play concerns a young girl returning home to her parent's house heavily pregnant and with her ne'er-do-well boyfriend in tow. Her sister and parents show only benign interest in them, until the girl's former sweetheart appears on the scene.

Guitar Man: 3

Fosse's 7th play is an extended monolgoue from the titular subway busker, who bemoans his wretched existence while destroying his guitar string by string. Existential dread ensues.

The Child: 4

Fosse's 4th play follows a couple from their initial meeting late at night at a bus shelter, through to their agonizing loss of a child due to premature labor, all the while haunted by an old vagrant who collects empty bottles and seems to live at the bus shelter.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rightfully famous in English for his magnificent novels, particularly the best book of the millennium to date, the Septology (in Damion Searls' translation), internationally Jon Fosse is equally well known for his plays, indeed he was for a time the most performed playwright in Europe, which are by contrast underappreciated in the Anglosphere. From a 2011 Independent interview:

Fosse has had 900 productions staged in more than 40 languages. "My plays travel extremely well," he says, not wasting time with false modesty. "And they have been well received everywhere – except here in England."

Is that his problem, or ours? "I manage perfectly well as I am," he smiles. "But for you, it ought to be something worth reflecting on."

And in the Guardian in 2015

"I think there's a fear of what is different. It makes your theatre unique, but sometimes in a stupid way, like your attitude to the World Cup. You're still the champions even if Germany wins, because you invented football."

Indeed for around 15 years, until 2014, plays were his primary output, before he switched back to prose (see e.g. this interview in Music and Literature).

In his Nobel lecture, A Silent Language (as translated into English by May-Brit Akerholt) Fosse explained how he rather stumbled into writing for theatre, but that it provided another way for him to explore the silence that is key to his work:

That I ended up as a dramatist – yes, what can I say about that?

I wrote novels and poetry and had no desire to write for theatre, but in time I did it because – as part of a publicly funded initiative to write more new Norwegian drama – I was offered what was to me, a poor author, a good sum of money to write the opening scene of a play, and ended up writing a whole play, my first and still most performed play, Someone Is Going to Come.

The first time I wrote a play turned out to be the biggest surprise in my whole life as a writer. Because in both prose and poetry I had tried to write what usually – in usual spoken language – cannot be said in words. Yes, that’s right. I tried to express the unsayable, which was given as the reason for awarding me the Nobel Prize. The most important thing in life cannot be said, only written, to twist a famous saying by Jacques Derrida. So I try to give words to the silent speech.

And when I was writing drama, I could use the silent speech, the silent people, in a whole other way than in prose and poetry. All I had to do was to write the word pause, and the silent speech was there. And in my drama the word pause is without a doubt the most important and the most used word – long pause, short pause, or just pause. In these pauses there can be so much, or so little. That something cannot be said, that something doesn’t want to be said, or is best being said by saying nothing at all.

Plays One is a collection of some of Fosse's earliest plays, translated in 2002:

Nokon kjem til å komme (1992–93, first performed in 1996) translated as Someone Is Going to Come by Gregory Motton
Namnet (1995) translated as The Name by Gregory Motton
Barnet (1996) translated as The Child by Louis Muinzer
Gitarmannen (1997) translated as The Guitar Man by Louis Muinzer

Someone Is Going to Come is a three-hander which opens:

In the garden in front of an old, somewhat dilapidated house, the paintwork is peeling, some window panes are broken, but nevertheless the house, which is desolately situated on a ledge on a steep slope, with a view to the sea, has its own weatherbeaten material beauty. A man and a woman come into the garden rom around the right hand corner of the house. HE is about fifty years old, slightly rotund with grey somewhat overlong hair, shifty eyes and slow movements. SHE is around thirty, quite tall, rather heavily built, medium length hair, large eyes and slightly childish movements. The man and woman walk alongside the house, holding each other by the hand, looking lengthily at the house.

SHE
(Jolly)
Here we are beside our own house
HE
Our own house
SHE
A beautiful old house
Far away from other houses
and from other people
HE
You and I alone
SHE
Not just alone
but alone together
(She looks up into his face)
Our own house
In this house we shall be together
you and I
alone together
HE
And no one is going to come
(They stop, stand looking at the house)

But the woman has a sense of unease, and becomes increasingly convinced someone is going to come - and when someone does, the former owner of the house, it triggers jealousy and insecurity in their own relationship.

The Name (winner of the Ibsen Prize in Norway) plays also on this sense of a close relationship whose dynamic is impacted by an outsider, but here an old friend rather than a stranger. A pregnant girl and her fiance arrive at the house of her parents (who she has not seen for some time) in need of accomodation - but her father wasn't even aware of the pregnancy, her fiance seems more absorbed in his books than getting acquainted with her parents and her only real companionship seems to come from a male friend from her time in the area, who seems a little too close to her. This is of the plays the one where the use of pauses, and self-interrupted conversations plays the most explicit role, with much of the meaning conveyed by what is not said.

The Guitar Man was for me the weakest of the four - a monologue by a busker who dismantles his guitar as he speaks, and sometimes sings - perhaps better in the performance although this bemused review suggests UK audiences has it otherwise.

My favourite of the four pieces was The Child - again primarily a two-hander with a third party disturbing the dynamic, here two thirty-somethings, Fredrik and Agnes who meet and instantly form a bond in a bus shelter on a rainy day, the third party a fifty-year old, Arvid, also in the shelter that day. Agnes had for some time roamed around in search of a light for companionship, and Arvid makes his living collecting empty bottles (which seems as much an excuse to approach anyone drinking, although he doesn't drink himself), and after Agnes and Fredrik move in together, he discovers she and Arvid did once have a brief relationship. But the novel's emotional core comes when Agnes falls pregnant, and then her waters break prematurely.

Overall - at the risk of being a Football'sComingHomeEngerland fan - I prefer Fosse's novels, and the plays feel they need acting to really come alive.

Read 26 Dec 2023, 3 stars

[Davvybrookbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plays One covers four early selected plays by Jon Fosse. The dates of both writing and production may be the reason for their selection. Like Fosse’s novels, the themes of isolation, family relationships, and loss pervade. His style here is highly repetitive with affective mimetic dialogue surrounding some kernel of past action unacknowledged.

Considered Fosse’s first major play, Someone is Going to Come (1993) centers on a couple (SHE, HE) who just arrived at their newly purchased house, previously inherited by a MAN living nearby. Set over just a few hours, the dramatic dialogue is repetitive, cycling through the perseverant minds of husband and wife, their singular hope and their fear.

SHE
Not just alone
but alone together
(She looks up into his face.)
Our own house
In this house we shall be together
you and I
alone together

The subtly of the effects of a fated conflict with a willful agency become the marrow at heart of this Norwegian gothic tale. Have they made a mistake? Is the dilapidated house haunted? What bargain was struck? How can we move on from the past? This was a lovely and iconic work of Jon Fosse. I believe this will be the first of reading all his plays.

The Name (1995) is perhaps the most unusual of the bunch, involving the largest number of characters: girl, boy, sister, mother, father, Bjarne. Can you guess why it is called the name yet? Well, this is the most involved and complex play, largely due to the number of actors but also because of all the actions before our scene left unsaid.

BOY
Your father has come home

GIRL
You've talked to him

BOY
(Nods.)
Depends what you call talked
I don't think he likes me
Neither do you
You want me to go (The GIRL looks at him.)
Just say
If you want me to go just let me know

GIRL
No

The resolve of this play is not entirely what one would expect. I would love to see this performed.

In The Guitar Man (1997), this singular voice is the most Beckettesque. The Guitar Man’s story is told and sung, our main character being also a kind of ancient Greek chorus, or coryphaeus telling his story even when no one is there to speak to. The themes of this volume remain present even here: being alone, finding another, having a child, remaining solitary.

That's how it is
(He begins to sing.)
I haven't anything to lose
I haven't anything to win
I haven't anything left
of what gave me a future
But I'm my own night
And I guess I'm a language
nobody else understands
(He stops singing, shakes his head.)
Think of saying something like that
a language nobody else understands
(Dejected about himself.)
And why should anybody else
have to understand
the language

The Child (1996) too is a Beckett type play. Beginning at a bus stop, waiting is the game. This is one of the few plays that has multiple settings: the bus stop, an apartment near the bus stop, and a hospital room. Each scene too involves a different set of characters, and like ancient Greek tragedy, the action takes place out of scene. The dialogue is filled with waiting, hope, anticipation, and of course fear for the worst.

NURSE
Perhaps
If
(Breaks off.)
But you know it's

FREDRICK
(Interrupts her.)
not really a child

NURSE
No not yet

FREDRICK
(A little ironically.)
I guess it's a question
of how you see it

In all, this was a beautiful version that makes sense to be located at the end of this selection of plays. In a way, the selection is well rounded by the variation of the plays converging upon similar themes and style.

[ginger · Rating 1 out of 5]

the translator did such an abysmal job that i, an undergraduate with only a minor in norwegian, could have done better. perhaps i don't understand jon fosse's "distinctly norwegian" writing style (according to my professor) but i hated the name and the child. i wanted to put a fork through my eye the characters were so insufferable.

[Daniel Herben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuatro obras llenas de dramatismo y no exentas de lirismo. Unas crean un clima inquietante. Otras son conmovedoras. Algunas ambas cosas a la vez. Y en todas ellas los personajes conquistan la empatía del lector.

[Sean Kottke · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Nothing’s so terrible … Not if we two stick together” (“The Child,” Act Two)

This quartet of early plays from the newest Nobel laureate impressed me much more than his novels. Fosse’s repetitive style works better in dialogue than in extended prose. The fourth play in this collection, “The Child,” was the most engaging for me. Across these four plays and the novella cycle “Trilogy,” there’s a motif of intrusion into a central relationship that presents an allegory of faith enduring in the face of contrary evidence, the value of clinging to the spiritual, the ideal, amidst the carnal.

[Senlin Du · Rating 5 out of 5]

Der Autor hat den Mut, sich der Wahrheit zu stellen. Die Realität der modernen Zivilisation ist nicht der Nihilismus des Lebens nach dem "Tod Gottes", wie die Existentialisten sagen, sondern die unvermeidliche Einsamkeit, die die Individuen auf der Erde erfahren, nachdem die christliche Zivilisation alle irdischen "Götter" außer dem selbst verborgenen transzendentalen Gott abgelehnt hat. Diese Einsamkeit treibt den Menschen in die Beziehung. Der Sinn ist nicht abwesend, kann aber nicht erklärt werden. Wittgensteins negative Theologie trifft diesen Punkt genau: Nur die weltlichen Dingen können gesagt werden. Über diese Dinge sollte Schweigen herrschen. Fosse akzeptiert diese Voraussetzung und ist in der Wahl seiner Geschichten eindeutig von Milton und Eliot beeinflusst, von denen er die archetypische Erzählung vom Garten Eden übernommen hat. Auch in Musil , im unvollendeten Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, gibt es eine edenische Erzählung, in der der Held und die Heldin in ihrer Beziehung ein "Tausendjähriges Reich" errichten wollen. Fosse geht noch weiter als er, indem er die Unzuverlässigkeit des "Tausendjährigen Reiches" in dieser Beziehung aufzeigt, so wie auch die Unzuverlässigkeit des "Tausendjährigen Reiches" im politischen Sinne eine durch eine Ideologie erzeugte Illusion ist. Sowohl das politische als auch das romantische Tausendjährige Reich versuchen, eine geschlossene Beziehung aufzubauen, die die transzendente Gottheit ablehnt. Die dritte Person (in der Bibel Jahwe , der Besitzer des Gartens, oder die Schlange, der Versucher, und im Drehbuch der "Er", der Besitzer des Hauses, der in den Augen des Helden auch der Versucher der Heldin ist, der aber gleichzeitig einen neuen Inhalt in die Beziehung einbringt) ist immer präsent und muss immer konfrontiert werden. Das bedeutet, dass es kein geschlossenes "Tausendjähriges Reich" geben kann, in dem die menschlichen Schwächen und unbekannten Möglichkeiten unweigerlich diesem Dritten ausgesetzt sind. Gleichzeitig bedeutet dies, dass die menschliche Existenz immer für eine unbekannte Gestalt offen ist. Wenn diese Figur der Zerstörer von Beziehungen sein kann, dann ist es ebenso natürlich, dass sie der Schöpfer von Beziehungen ist. Das Problem besteht nicht darin, diese Modernität zu leugnen, wie Heidegger es tat, sondern die Bedeutung dieser Modernität, den Wert der Situation, in der der moderne Mensch lebt, anzuerkennen, und der Autor leugnet nicht die Elemente der Freude und der Hoffnung, die in diesem modernen Leben verbleiben, und hier ist er gerecht.

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 4 out of 5]

After all, Yun Fosse is primarily a playwright, not a novelist, and his plays are reconciled with his prose, the first acquaintance with which was a kind of shock therapy: where the hell is this world going if they give a Nobel for this? Now, after reading a collection of his plays, I understand that Fosse's prose is a natural continuation of his dramaturgy: the same endless mumbling repetitions, the same instantaneous transition from the level of understanding when one partner continues the other's remark to cosmic cold and the removal of the characters from each other. The "far-near" effect conveyed in the dialogue is the main thing for him, he found the opportunity to express with the most economical means the contradictory desire to be with someone and the desire to protect his space from invasion - unthinkable in previous millennia and suddenly become a reality today.

Reading the plays, you see your cinema, which is much inferior to the best productions, but by an order of magnitude superior to mediocre ones - approximately at the level of a good performance. Based on the fact that there was only one ideal in my theatrical century, there are many good ones, mediocre ones more - reading a collection of plays is a very good alternative, which, thanks to the AST and translations by Vera Dyakonova, Elena Rachinskaya and Alla Rybikova, the Russian-speaking reader has. English-speaking and even Norwegian. by the way, they do not have such a collection, the collection "When an Angel passes through the stage" is a unique collection of Nobeliant's plays under one cover.

Here, before each play, there is a history of publications and productions: the first, Norwegian (which is not always the earliest), Russian with an indication of the theater and director. I already said this when I wrote about "Septology", but it's not a sin to repeat it - the plays of Yoon Fosse have been staged more than a thousand times on various world stages and he is the second Norwegian playwright after Ibsen in terms of the number of productions.

Довольно короткая пауза
Во всяком случае было
здорово тебя повидать
Я так давно
тебя не видел
И ты так неожиданно
вдруг появилась здесь
а я сидел один
Нет надо же мне и в голову не пришло
что ты
вдруг появишься здесь
Все-таки Юн Фоссе в первую очередь драматург, а не прозаик и его пьесы примиряют с его прозой,первое знакомство с которой было родом шоковой терапии: куда, к черту, катится этот мир, если за такое дают Нобеля? Сейчас, прочитав сборник его пьес, понимаю, что проза Фоссе - естественное продолжение его драматургии: те же бесконечные бормочущие повторы, тот же мгновенный переход от уровня понимания, когда один партнер продолжает реплику другого до космического холода и удаления героев друг от друга. Эффект "далекое-близкое", переданный в диалоге - главное у него, он нашел возможность максимально экономными средствами выразить противоречивое стремление быть с кем-то и желание оградить свое пространство от вторжения - немыслимое в прежние тысячелетия и внезапно ставшее реальностью сегодня.

Читая пьесы, видишь свое кино, много уступающее имерсивностью лучшим постановкам, но на порядок превосходящее посредственные, - примерно на уровне хорошего спектакля. Исходя из того, что идеальный на моем театральном веку был лишь один, хороших много, посредственных больше - чтение сборника пьес очень недурная альтернатива, которая благодаря АСТ и переводам Веры Дьяконовой, Елены Рачинской и Аллы Рыбиковой у русскоязычного читателя есть. Англоязычный и даже норвежский. кстати, такой не имеют, сборник "Когда ангел проходит по сцене" уникальное по обширности собрание пьес нобелианта под одной обложкой.

Здесь перед каждой пьесой история публикаций и постановок: первая, норвежская (которая не всегда самая ранняя), российские с указанием театра и режиссера. Я уже говорила об этом, когда писала о "Септологии", но не грех и повторить - пьесы Юна Фоссе на разных мировых сценах ставились больше тысячи раз и он второй после Ибсена по количеству постановок норвежский драматург.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four "minimalist" plays by the 2003 Nobel Prizewinner Jon Fosse, these plays are spare and stark, dealing with the tragedies of ordinary life.

Someone is Going to Come (Nokon kjem til à komme, written 1992-3, produced 1996, Eng. tr. 2002) presents a middle-aged couple who have rented an isolated house by the sea in order to finally be alone together, but even here they don't succeed in avoiding importunate others.

The Name (Namnet, 1995, Eng. tr. 2002) is about a pregnant girl who comes home to her parents with her boyfriend, the baby's father; she just wants someone to care about her, but it becomes obvious that neither her boyfriend, her parents, nor an ex-boyfriend who pays a visit really have any interest in her as a person.

The Child (Barnet, 1996, Eng. tr. 2002), the longest of the four at just over a hundred pages, is about two lonely people who meet at a bus stop, move in together, and are going to have a baby — but things don't work out that way.

The Guitar Man (Gitarmannen, 1997, Eng. tr. 2002) is a very short monologue; an old man comes into an empty bar (perhaps only empty because no one else matters to the play, in Fosse's minimalist style), has a beer, talks about his life and loneliness, and ends up in despair.

All four are written in short sentences and sentence fragments, often just breaking off in the middle, as if what they were going to say was just too unimportant to continue with.

[Ba · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is Fosse before he has completely worked out his toolkit, with which he blew me away in later plays like "I Am The Wind" and short prose like "Morning and Evening." Family/interpersonal dramas, some interesting and moving moments (esp. in the final play, "The Child") but it felt like he had not figured out how to harness the minimalistic quality and repetition that are characteristic to his writing to full poetic potential. I like it when Fosse gets more archetypal. For ex. the ending of "Someone is Going to Come" did not feel to me like Fosse at his most inspired. But the premises were all very interesting. I thought the latter two plays were better executed.

[Cc · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is Fosse before he has completely worked out his toolkit, with which he blew me away in later plays like "I Am The Wind" and short prose like "Morning and Evening." Family/interpersonal dramas, some interesting and moving moments (esp. in the final play, "The Child") but it felt like he had not figured out how to harness the minimalistic quality and repetition that are characteristic to his writing to full poetic potential. I like it when Fosse gets more archetypal. For ex. the ending of "Someone is Going to Come" did not feel to me like Fosse at his most inspired. But the premises were all very interesting. I thought the latter two plays were better executed.

[gianluca]

there are several moments of brilliance in these plays by jon fosse - all united by a distinct minimalism, a shared sense of human misery, and a tendency to spiral into obsessiveness. characters often return to the same concepts, fixating on the same fears or wounds, folding their lives back into a single layer of compulsiveness. the stories are tragic, but they never resolve into a clear ending, thus coating the narration with a pleasing sense of suspension. i would love to see them on stage

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este volumen contiene hasta el momento mi pieza de teatro preferida. Los temas por los que se mueven las obras contenidas en este volumen se emparentan sobre todo con "Trilogía" en donde la pobreza, la juventud, el acontecimiento del embarazo, la paternidad y la figura del extraño abarcan todo el espacio de reflexión y desarrollo de las escenas.

[Pyramids Ubiquitous · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fosse presents writing so minimalistic it might as well have been written in binary code. He trims his stories to merely the essential, cutting straight to the heart of human feeling. Clearly a stylist above all else, reading him is an alienating experience, but one that we all know so well.