BLUE EYES
by Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson
Teitur Atlason - dv.is
"As the play progresses you realise that here is a story we all know. This is a story of a country oppressed by power, threats, co-dependency and corruption. This is a story of when a disgusting power structure died in the economic crash and how we dealt with its death. We are the siblings who do not dare to leave the basement. We are the siblings who do not dare to bury the power
structure that created us. We are being discussed. We are the material.
Blueyes is a farce. Iceland is also a farce and the question is which one is more disturbing or surreal.
I encourage everyone to see Blue eyes.
The play is nothing less than a massive cultural event."
Hlín Agnarsdóttir, DV
It was very enjoyable to visit Borgarleikhúsid last weekend to see the opening of Blue eyes, a new play by Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson in collaboration with Óskabörn Ógæfunnar.
Enjoyable because this up and coming young writer has written a new Icelandic play and special because it is a ruthless satire on Icelandic society and political reality although in disguise.
Tyrfingur is truly a new voice in Icelandic
playwriting; he does not hesitate to write fresh and tough dialogue which is both inventive and often madly funny. In addition he chooses material far beyond traditional theatre, he dares to take risks
and lead us into the complex recesses of human existence where the strange and the grotesque rule.
Helga Völundardóttir, Kvennablaðið
"It is wonderful to witness when the youth of today and in this case their representative, Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson, manages to put together a powerful play that feels like a bucket of water being thrown over the unsuspecting masses.
Where the human impotence to capture freedom and make it one’s own becomes so naked and obvious you are on the verge of tears.
It is very moving for people of my age to get this slap in the face, to be reminded that this long scandal of the human race does barely change.
Through simple language we believe more in power than in life itself. We trust power with our lives while we hate it at the same time. How is this possible again and again, generation after generation?
Freedom is a distant dream and really just an idea and a figment of the imagination. So it was, so it is, and so it seems to continue to be.
Do not misunderstand me, the play is far from depressing, this is a rollicking comedy with references to high art and the expressions of performance art. The text is frequently brilliant and sustains a
thundering pace throughout.
The play is a brave act of a young man who has decided to tell us important things about ourselves and our society with the fresh eye of a new generation and if hope exists then it resides with a new generation right? But then the undeniable feeling remains which is the play’s undertone: this hasbeen said a hundred times before, but nothing happens.
The time has come to look into what is wrong."
Þorgerður E. Sigurðardóttir, Víðsjá
"Here we have a very impressive play, one that does not offer simple solutions or tidy resolutions but manages to make real a certain situation. Tyrfingur has with his previous plays, Grande and The Little
Shed on the Prairie, shown that he has a love for peripheral characters, people rejected by society,
people who do not have a guaranteed access to culture. Blue eyes can be interpreted in various ways and the director, Vignir Rafn Valþórsson, has chosen an interesting path to present the play.
As a whole the performance is well thought out, the material is well handled; the audience do not get any solutions on a silver platter and have to work for the waves of laughter, which is always good.
The strength of the play and the performance resides mostly in the complex story that each audience member can interpret in their own way. References to the present are never intrusive but invite multiple interesting views on our society and situation. Blue eyes is some sort of tragicomedy about power and desire and on top of everything the play happens in Kópavogur, the paradise of the 2
middle class, where one blue recycling bin cause great upset if it arrives without warning. What do you have to be to fit into such an environment, what is accepted, and what lands on the periphery or beyond, hopefully the audience will ask themselves such questions. Questions are necessary but also uncomfortable and they are aimed at us, the blue eyed scared children who long for the sun and hopefully can enjoy it one day."