Review: STOP THE WORLD . I WANT TO GET OFF at Parkteatern

One of the best Theater experience in Stockholm each summer is the Open Air Theaters. The coucil founded "Stadsteatern" moves out to various parks as "Parkteatern" during the summer months and have a variety of plays, music events, children plays and each one on musical. This year it is Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley's "Stop the World - I Want To Get Off".

It opened 1961 in London and in 1963 in Sweden with Jan Malmsjö and Anna Sundqvist as the main characters. Ever since then Jan Malmsjö has been strongly connected with the song "Gonna Build a mountain". The story is originally placed in a circus, but in the Parkteater's set, the story has been transferred to Östermalm, an upperclass area in Stockholm. Littlecap (Albin Flinkas) is a careerist and opportunist and we can follow his life from a teenager to an old man. His big plan is to create an app of which he can make a fortune off. An app that can stop the world. He meets the upper class girl Evie (Jessica Heribertsson) who becomes pregnant after their first encounter. A complication is that it turns out that she is Littlechaps boss's daughter. They have to get married in a hurry and Littlechaps career takes off.. The plots in the musical is not that engaging, but it contains some, really good songs that today are classic on their own like "Once of a lifetime" and "Gonna build a mountain". It's fun to hear them in their correct context as most of the time you hear them in concerts on their own. One of my absolute favorites is "What kind of fool am I" that comes at the end, a spell bounding version with Albin Flinkas does.

Jessica Heribertsson is excellent as Littlechaps wife Evie, who most of the time is pregnant and faithfully stands by her husband, even when he plays around. Jessica also plays Russian Anja and American Ginnie. Albin and Jessica match each other very well. On stage, we also have Cilla Silvia Gotborg, Anna Sise, Henning Attlin and Petter Skoglund. Initially, Henning and Petter performs a brilliantly impressive Parkour inspired dance. It is very cool. It is a high speed from the beginning as the actors enter the stage in every possible way, by bikes, jumps etc. During the show, almost every actor is on stage all the time and there is a lot of impressive dance numbers, signed Hans Marklund, who also directed. The plot is updated to 2018 and there are many current references, a handbagdog who on yaps named Horace, (after Horace Engdahl in the Swedish academy) and mums who drinks expensive caffe latte all the time, Littlechap who at the end will do political career in the Opportunist Party, Donald Trump, Kardashians, etc. All references are delivered in a natural way and gives it modern and contemporary edge. Everyone is stylishly dressed in dark costumes with white shirts giving a modern feel. Simple but efficient props such as 4 car tires to sympathize with a Ubertaxi, auditor bags are stacked as a speaker chair, etc.

I really like that there is a live orchestra and musicians, Andreas Landegren, Barbro Lindkvist, Martin Höper and Rebecca Meiselbach and they are also part of the action, for example, when Littlechap is in Russia, typical Russian hats go on and in USA there are caps with American flags.

The musical is about 1.15 minutes and it is well worth seeing it one evening. Perfect tax recovery because it's free for everyone. Pack the picnic basket, come as you are and enjoy talented music artists and musicians. Stop The World is played in some different parks around Stockholm and ends with 3 performances in Rålambshov Park on July 1st. The evening I saw it was a perfect summer evening with 27 degrees outside in park "Solursparken" (sundialpark) in the suburb Vällingby. Plenty of people.

The full program for the Open Air Theaters can be found at:

http://kulturhusetstadsteatern.se/parkteatern/

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