Introduction

The Gold Digger

DIRECTOR: OLE SØRENSEN. SCENOGRAPY: GITTE KATH. ACTORS: OLE SØRENSEN, KLAUS ANDERSEN, LARS RØDBROE, JESPER VOLKE

The Gold Digger is a story about a father, Laust Eriksen, who loses his wife, Kirstine, and his son, Anders, because his home town – a piteous and envious farmers society – does not grant him the happiness that he so bravely and eagerly seeks. Laust’s livelihood and fortune is suffocated in the small farmers society when one does not go unpunished from breaking common norms. Kirstine dies while Anders is small, and Laust emigrates to America where he finds gold.

But life on the American prairie is tough and so is the battle for wealth. After 29 years of struggle, the longing for his son whom is put into house hold care, he decides to return to the village in Denmark

Taking its point of departure in one of Johannes V. Jensen’s ”Himmerlandshistorier”, Teatret Møllen has made a musical dramatization of the story of Laust Eriksen.

Johannes V. Jensen has a special gift to approach the persons and the enviroments he descri-bes with intimacy and detail. The actors’ music underlines the atmospheres that the story about Laust - a story that is both warm and poetical and filled with love and loss.

’The Gold Digger’ is an excellent example of how Teatret Møllen, with music, humor and warmth, makes their mantra become theater: ’How little can you do with - and yet get it all in.’ The play is both entertaining and catching. And it creates long lasting mental images and wonder. - Teateravisen, Kirsten Dahl

The group’s versatility comes to the fore with their version unaccompanied church singing in the style of the old Scottish psalms and as heard in the Jutland set film Babette’s Feast (Babettes Gæstebud)... all of which do a great job of lifting the sorry saga to the level of rollicking entertain-ment…- Traverse, Imaginate Review, Irene Brown

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Anna Stein AnkerstjernePR & kommunikation

Teatret MøllenMøllepladsen 4DK-6100 Haderslevwww.teatretmoellen.dk+45 25560946

Review Teateravisen (Theatre News), review by Kirsten Dahl, 08/11/2013Translated from Danish

Review of The Gold Digger”Life affirming gold digger tragic”

Life affirming gold digger tragic

’The Gold Digger’ is a brilliant example of how Teatret Møllen with music, mood and humour realizes their mantra: ’How little can you do with - and yet show it all.’ The play is both enjoyable and gripping. And it creates long-lasting mental images and wonder. What does Johannes V. Jensen, a four-leaf clover of men wearing hats and suspenders, merrily playing Blue Grass, a small un-planed wood floor filled with all sorts of musical instruments in front and behind old boxes and stable lamps, and a single burger all have in common? Extre-mely much. With all the typical Tearet Møllen-tunes turned on, we dance, as an audience, into the setting of the deceased author of the Himmerland histories about the mine-worker Lavst Eriksen. We will be lifted up and in good moods by the unpretentious and happy way that Jesper Folke Olsen, Ole Sørensen, Klaus Andersen and Lars Rødbroe on accordion, double bass, base guitar, saw, banjos, etc. play beautifully arranged traditional American folk-lore music. The music provides a perfect setting and is a successful key character in it-self.

We are not for a moment in doubt that such gold-digger-music is the sound of happi-ness – or are we? For all the while feeling light and joyful we also have a crushing lump in the throat - anamazement by how something so lonesome and inhuman can happen to Lavst Eriksen and a stinging feeling that everything we hear is recognizable from the agri-cultivating time of when the story took place, till today, in 2013, in life among friends, family and in larger soci-al contexts.

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FACTSTeatret Møllen: The Gold Digger - Based on Johannes V. Jensen’s textsManuscript: The performers Instruction: Ole Sørensen. Scenography: Gitte Kath.ACTORS/PERFORMERS: Jesper Folke Olsen, OleSørensen, Klaus Andersen and Lars Rødbroe.Age 12 – Duration: 75 mins. Touring show, premiered at Teatret Møllen in Haderslev, Denmark on October 3 2013, Aprilfestival 2014, Danish+-Festivalen in May 2014, and will be touring Oct-Nov 2014. www.teatretmoellen.dk

Review Teateravisen (Theatre News), review by Kirsten Dahl, 08/11/2013

Happiness, homesickness, fraud and loss

The Gold Digger story is a story about a father, Lavst Eriksen, who loses his wife, Kirstine, and his son, Anders, because his petty and jealous farming community does not grant him the happiness that he – so courageously and persistently seeks.

Lavst’s livelihood and his happiness get suffocated in the small village society where one does not go unpunished from breaking common norms. Kirstine dies when Anders is quite small. Laust emigrates to America, where he finds gold. But the yearning for his son, who is put in the care of a house hold, makes him return to the village 29 years later.

In the play, Teatret Møllen calls the very notion of Johannes V. Jensen’s tale ’the story ofAnders Eriksen gold digger boots’. Wisely, because that way they note andcreate a mental image of the fact that it is not the financial enriching gold digging the storyis about (this plays an ultra-small part), but loneliness, loss and fraud.

The play’s stenographical set-up, the text and the humorous warm tone that is bothmusic, facial expressions and gestures, encourages us to wonder about and distance us from pettiness, intole-rance and human rejection.

Without the use of direct interaction, we are, as an audience, co-creators of the gold digger story, thanks to the initial eye contact and the persistent invitation to listen and get involved in the atmosphere that occur in the space.If one has followed the plays of Teatret Møllen there are many similarities to many previous performances in the simple way something essential is framed and formed. It works - also here.

Ole Sørensen becomes Lavst Eriksen’s Kirstine when he ties a small scarf around his headand dances folk dance with Klaus Andersen’s Lavst who is in love and invites Kirstine to join him behind the wooden stage wall where the two of them look at the stars – after which Kirstine displays a pregnant bel-ly. The small house that Lavst himself builds is placed on top of the wall next to a small flagpole. Kirstine’s sudden death we see in the form of her scarf which is placed over the back wall. And when we meet the adult Anders in his carpentry store it is also at the back wall - in the form of Klaus Andersen well equipped with a giant plane, which he is planing with - fiercely and only occasionally scow-ling toward the returned father, who repeatedly haunts the store to reconcile with his son.

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Review Teateravisen (Theatre News), review by Kirsten Dahl, 08/11/2013

Anders knew that the miner would want his son back, says one of the actors somewhere. InBrecht’ian 3rd person and lovely placed after we have felt that this is what it’s about.The dramatic text is overall a great transformation. Put into the musicians’ story frame it offers a verbal essence of the original text.

And above all with phrases hat in the context are poetical and deep by sayingthings directly and allowing them to accommodate more than immediately. For example, ’Have you become a rich American?’ ’Anders and his father never spoke about things’, ‘Lavst has never been up in the living room’, ’No one was ever near him’ and ‘One day he had quietly gone off to The States, for the long prairies and endless forests. And the village - they never heard from him again’.

It is also wonderful that Teatret Møllen, as something unexpected, adds an entertainingintermezzo, where Lars Rødboe pulls a burger bun over, triggering a burger lecture anda little history lecture on emigration to America annotated with: ’So you could say they were both emigrants and immigrants’.

Theatre Concert miniature

Nothing in the music is random. Saw accompanied by banjo in stable light adds sound to theshort gold digger sequence etc. . For the youngest in the audience, the 12-year-olds, Bluegrass and some elements of the scenography might appear old-fashioned but it is obvious how much they enjoy it anyways.

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Review Traverse, Imaginate review, by Irene Brown 16/05/2015

SHOW DETAILSVenue: Traverse Theatre, Company: Teatret MøllenProduction: Johannes V Jensen (writer), Ole Sørensen (direc-tor), Gitte Kath (set design), Performers: Ole SØrensen, Lars RØdbroe, Jesper Folke, Klaus AndersenRunning time: 55mins

The Gold Digger, TraverseImaginate Review

Immigration and emigration are words heard a lot these days. This show from Haderslev in Denmark tells a tale based on a Danish legend written by Nobel prizewinning author Johannes V. Jensen as part of his novel Himmerland Stories written within memory of the 19th century gold rush. It tells the tale of a man called Laust Eriksen who lives in a Danish community that’s both small in size and outlook. He hears the call of another life in faraway America where he might make his fortune. Sadly this means that he leaves his wife and son to gain his dream. Some 29 years later, he returns home as an old man in the hope of a reunion with his abandoned son.

This is told by 4 men dressed in the hill billy look of yee haw braces, a mix of dusty bowler hats and a stovepipe, battered boots and surrounded by some equally battered trunks. They sit before a brick wall that serves as a giant prop throughout and are surrounded by a whole pile of instruments from ukulele, banjo, guitars, saw, clarinet, steel guitar and in the pocket of the main narrator, a moothie (mouth organ). With these they produce some swinging, foot stomping, clap inducing Blue Grass sounds including versions of Old Dan Tucker and Further on Up the Road and including some appropriate native American drum beats all ofwhich do a great job of lifting the sorry saga to the level of rollicking entertainment.

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The whole this is performed with the casual air of a group of genial entertaining uncles and this ap-plies particularly to the chief narrator the Klaus Andersen who creates great hilarity by playing a caricatured woman with just a headscarf. He delivers innuendo with twinkling mischief and his portrayal of the taciturnmelancholy of a man persistently seeking kindness in his old age is suitably understated.The group’s versatility comes to the fore with their version unaccompanied church singing in the style of the old Scottish psalms and as heard in the Jutland set film Babette’s Feast ( Babettes Gæstebud)

There may be no redemption in this tale but Teatret Møllen’s interpretation more than makes up for that and their finale of the lovely old 1930s US classic You are my Sunshine about love and loss puts the icing on this Danish treat.

Age recommend 10+ Friday 15 – Saturday 16 May

Review Traverse, Imaginate review, by Irene Brown 16/05/2015

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