Barbro Lindgren’s classic children’s book “Loranga, Masarin och Dartanjang”, which has previously been turned into both a play and an animated film, is the basis of this operatic creation with music by Carl Unander-Scharin. It is not surprising that this composer, known among other things for his opera “Tokfursten”, fell for this anarchic world-run-wild created with such a sure touch by Lindgren. The book’s absurd comedy with its vein of existential pondering is as if specially written for the director, Karl Dunér, who has a past history of staging absurdism and is behind many aesthetically artful productions.
Carl Unander-Scharin’s music plays with genres and rhythms set in a musically theatrical and pleasing-to-the-ear gentle modernism, which is at times captivating with pleasantly interwoven vocal parts, at times garnished with crazy whims och jazzy effects like a car horn duet and an overwhelming percussion solo played on pipes. The acoustic image is also coloured by Loranga’s radio that blares out pop songs, his tick-tocking heartbeat and pop-star Dartanjang’s record-short hit song parade.
The well-singing cast also includes Niklas Björling Rygert’s cunning and sticky-fingered thief, who literally hovers with swelling feelings for Marianne Hellgren Staykov’s warbling parrot.
A number of scenes are surrealistically dreamlike, with police, thieves, and tigers singing and dancing in their pink tutus. The music paints a mood, and at times on stage a flickering longing and a fateful desolation sweep past in the midst of all the craziness.