I Am the Wind, Young Vic

Norwegian Jon Fosse’s play fabulously directed by theatre legend Patrice Chéreau

by Aleks SierzTuesday, 10 May 2011

Two men in a boat: Tom Brooke and Jack Laskey in Jon Fosse’s ‘I Am the Wind’Simon Annand

Today’s Britons are a minor miracle of globalised taste. Typically, we are amazingly eclectic: we eat curry and sushi, read Swedish novels or South American magic realists, dress like Italians, drive German cars, listen to world music. Our houses are full of Scandinavian design. Our favourite films are as likely to be made in China or Afghanistan as in Hollywood. So, watching the British premiere of a new play by Norwegian Jon Fosse directed by French theatre legend Patrice Chéreau, one is compelled to ask: why are we so suspicious of foreign drama?

Fosse’s subject is the human condition, and this sparsely written play pares down the question of existence to its bare essentials

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