Alan Goodson

Samuel Morgenstern, an American Jew who left Vienna as a child in 1938, has seemingly made peace with his hometown, where he has been living for some years now, when he is suddenly beset by a number of unexpected visitors: his estranged daughter, Raizele—a psychologist in need of help, fleeing from her family’s past and a bad divorce; Joshua—a naïve, young American searching for some kind of identity; and Bubbe—Morgenstern’s grandmother murdered by the Nazis, who emerges from a glacier with which he shares his apartment, and who proceeds to cook a fresh pot of matzo ball soup every day. Can Bubbe’s soup bring these characters together and help them discover a sense of belonging as Samuel and Raizele reopen old wounds, Raizele and Joshua fall into a passionate affair neither understands, the streets below explode in xenophobic rioting, and the glacier expands further and further into the apartment?

The play addresses issues of cultural belonging that have always preoccupied American Jews (and in their own variations on a theme, all immigrant communities): To what degree can one assimilate into modern American culture and still maintain a sense of belonging to one’s original culture and history? Is that even possible? What are the consequences to the psyche of advanced secularization and assimilation, especially on the second and third generations? What role does the shadow of the Holocaust play in this dynamic? And what happens to the concept of “home”? These are the issues Morgenstern in Vienna grapples with in sometimes comedic, sometimes dramatic fashion.

In this absurdist comedy, a character in a play gradually realizes he’s an actor playing a character in a play—that the world around him is not real, that his words and actions have been predetermined by a playwright, and that an audience is observing his every move— but the more he tries to convince the other characters of this fact, the more insane he appears to them to be, with ultimately tragic consequences. Are the other characters involved in a conspiracy to cover up the truth? Or is their onstage existence really the only world they perceive? Or is it all the result of a malicious playwright’s inexplicable malevolence toward one character? This meta-theatrical farce, with its plot twists and turns and multiple levels of perspective (including a play within a play within a play), challenges our perceptions of reality, as well as the concept of truth itself.

In this farce with existentialist undertones, Aaron Gitsovich, an unemployed musicologist in mid-life crisis struggling to do a good deed by looking after his druggie niece, has bought a broken-down antique chest in which he finds the manuscript of Mozart’s three missing bassoon concertos. Before he can sell the manuscript to solve his financial woes, others come looking for them, too: a bureaucrat from the Austrian Ministry of Culture who is not who he appears to be; and a Bavarian nobleman for whom the concertos were written, who arrives out of the chest from the Royal Court in Munich. When the nobleman seduces the niece and takes her back to the 18th century, Gitsovich’s temperamental sister comes looking for her. Meanwhile, a doctor, who turns out to be an actor looking for work, is engaged to supply penicillin to those returning from the syphilis-ridden 1770’s, but mistakes them, due to their period clothing, for a troupe of actors rehearsing a play by Molière, and Gitsovich winds up being sought by the police for a bank break-in committed by one of his house guests—but which one? All eventually end up traveling to the past and back as they get caught up in the search for The Missing Three, and for what’s missing in their lives . . .

A former butler, Herselfand, is alone in a run-down, apparently war-damaged studio apartment, making a cup of tea, when an unexpected visitor arrives—his former employer, Madam, now dressed in rags. They are both survivors, and never expected to see each other alive. They are soon joined by two other former members of the household: Charlotte, a little girl when the others last saw her, and now a resistance fighter looking for a place to lie low now that the war is over and the underground is overground, a situation to which she’s having difficulty adapting; and Rinaldo, Madam’s former Master of Revels, now a black marketeer, who is also looking for a place to hide. The four reminisce about the lost past and, when Rinaldo resumes his position as Master of Revels, attempt to hold onto what vestiges of human culture they can, as that very culture collapses outside the apartment walls, and gradually closes in on them.

Bengt Ahlfors’ adaptation of Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days is part satire, part romance, part adventure. It follows the well-known journey of Phileas Fogg and Passepartout as they attempt to circumvent the globe in 80 days to win a wager, but Ahlfors tells the story with ironic humor, absurdist farce, and political commentary. This adaptation had already achieved notable success in over 40 major productions throughout Europe before moving to the U.S., where it has enjoyed critically-acclaimed productions in Florida (at the New Theatre in Coral Gables), New York (the 1,100-seat New York State Theatre Institute in Troy), and New Hampshire (the Peterborough Players). It is a highly theatrical piece that generously provides 7 actors with the opportunity of a virtuoso display of technical and imaginative skills, and offers the director and design team free conceptual reign in exploring the many locales and situations.

Bengt Ahlfors is one of Scandinavia's most well-known and successful playwrights and directors. Since 1963, he has written more than 30 plays, most of them hit comedies; and directed over 60 plays, classical and contemporary, including many of his own works. He is also known as a novelist, poet, screenwriter, composer, a writer of satirical short stories, and as the former Artistic Director of the Swedish Theatre of Helsinki. In 1986, Mr. Ahlfors wrote the world's first play dealing with the subject of heterosexual AIDS, Are There Tigers in the Congo?, which became an immediate success following its premiere at the renowned Little Theatre of Helsinki, one of the best-known theatres in Scandinavia, where it remained in the repertoire for more than 400 performances, and subsequently went on to be translated into 19 languages and performed throughout the world.

“Only tame birds feel longing. Wild birds—fly.” Thus muses Ragnar, a recently retired small-town school principal, as he looks back on his life and the things he never did, and tries to sort out what’s ahead—but he can’t for the life of him remember the name of the poet who said these words that are suddenly so meaningful. And he doesn’t like how the future looks. He’s constantly bickering about anything and everything with his wife of 42 years, Anneli, who is also retired; he has to hide his beloved cigars and whiskey in the bookcase and enjoy them furtively because she won’t let him lead an “unhealthy life”; and he has an ominous doctor’s appointment up ahead. But things are even worse than he knows: Lars, his best friend and the town’s widowed pastor, is having an affair with Anneli; and Lars’ daughter, Monika, is beginning to suspect that her father doesn’t really have those whips and handcuffs that turned up in his closet for props in a passion play. All this is upended when Ragnar returns from the hospital and announces he only has three weeks to live—so he no longer has to smoke and drink in secret and he can eat all his favorite fatty foods. But when this leads to Lars’ guilty conscience getting the best of him and he tells Ragnar about his affair with Anneli, the results are most unexpected…

This dark comedy of the challenges of life after retirement shatters the stereotypes of “senior citizens,” exposing with biting humor their passion, desires, and jealousies as no different from anyone else’s. As Monika, herself engulfed in marital infidelities, asks of her elders when the truth is finally revealed: “So it never ends?” No, it never ends...and it can even get crazier.

The Last Cigar has enjoyed the same pattern of success as Ahlfors’ other full-length plays, which have all had long runs in numerous productions throughout Scandinavia and Central Europe, most of them on national theatre stages.

Bengt Ahlfors is one of Scandinavia's most well-known and successful playwrights and directors. Since 1963, he has written more than 30 plays, most of them hit comedies; and directed over 60 plays, classical and contemporary, including many of his own works. He is also known as a novelist, poet, screenwriter, composer, a writer of satirical short stories, and as the former Artistic Director of the Swedish Theatre of Helsinki. In 1986, Mr. Ahlfors wrote the world's first play dealing with the subject of heterosexual AIDS, Are There Tigers in the Congo?, which became an immediate success following its premiere at the renowned Little Theatre of Helsinki, one of the best-known theatres in Scandinavia, where it remained in the repertoire for more than 400 performances, and subsequently went on to be translated into 19 languages and performed throughout the world.

A vivacious and headstrong 78-years-young colonel’s widow has absconded from her husband’s funeral with the ashes—so she won’t feel quite so alone at home—while her three heirs are scheming to get her declared incompetent so they can sell her valuable apartment and divide the spoils between them: the widow’s hard-drinking son, an architect who designs “impossible houses that no one wants to live in,” and who is constantly in financial turmoil; the widow’s quick-witted and sharp-tongued ex-daughter-in-law, who is constantly scheming to get more money out of her ex-husband; and the widow’s slow-witted daughter, who has had five husbands and five children—one with each—and is constantly angling for the next. Add to the mix the family’s long-time cleaning lady—who later turns out to have been the colonel’s lover—and who has the unfortunate disability of not being able to lie; the widow’s former lover, who suddenly reappears after 38 years upon hearing the news of the colonel’s death; and the ex-daughter-in-law’s psychiatrist, an obsessive slalom skier.

These are the eccentric characters brought together by Bengt Ahlfors in Ashes and Aquavit—as the widow overhears the family scheming to get her into a nursing home and decides to redecorate her apartment in defiance; the ex-daughter-in-law gets her psychiatrist to do an undercover psychological examination of the widow while posing as a paperhanger (only he doesn’t know he’s supposed to be a paperhanger); the daughter mistakes the widow’s ex-lover for the psychiatrist-cum-paperhanger; and the widow mistakes the psychiatrist for a mentally-handicapped handyman looking for a job. All this as the colonel’s homemade schnapps—his beloved aquavit, of which only one carafe remains—is coveted by all; and as the aquavit gradually disappears, the two lovers of long ago stumble closer and closer to the possibility of beginning a new life together.

Ashes and Aquavit is a surprisingly structured play that traces a stylistic arc from domestic comedy in Act I, to introspective, darkly comic monologue in Act II, to the utter farce of Act III. It offers a mature actress a powerful tour-de-force role as Vera, the headstrong colonel’s widow; and confronts a number of issues relevant to current American society as our population ages, people remain active longer, and are increasingly less hesitant about taking off in new directions in their later years—sometimes to the chagrin of their families. It has enjoyed the same pattern of success as Ahlfors’ other full-length plays, which have all had long runs in numerous productions throughout Scandinavia and Central Europe, most of them on national theatre stages. In addition, each of these productions has garnered for its leading actress, in the role of Vera, considerable recognition and praise.

Bengt Ahlfors is one of Scandinavia's most well-known and successful playwrights and directors. Since 1963, he has written more than 30 plays, most of them hit comedies; and directed over 60 plays, classical and contemporary, including many of his own works. He is also known as a novelist, poet, screenwriter, composer, a writer of satirical short stories, and as the former Artistic Director of the Swedish Theatre of Helsinki. In 1986, Mr. Ahlfors wrote the world's first play dealing with the subject of heterosexual AIDS, Are There Tigers in the Congo?, which became an immediate success following its premiere at the renowned Little Theatre of Helsinki, one of the best-known theatres in Scandinavia, where it remained in the repertoire for more than 400 performances, and subsequently went on to be translated into 19 languages and performed throughout the world.

The Illusionists is a melancholy comedy that (like Chaplin’s Limelight) revolves around the meeting of two artists—one young, one old. Kasimir is a bitter, cynical old actor, a hypochondriac who thinks he has played his last role, King Lear. He is ill, lying in bed waiting for a doctor, when an unexpected visitor arrives instead: Charlotta (or Charlie, as she likes to be called), a young woman who has written her first play, and is determined that Kasimir play the role of God in it. He protests, but her enthusiasm overpowers his doubts, and they begin reading the odd play. Although she denies it, the play is clearly an act of revenge on her lover who has betrayed her, and the reading leads to arguments about love, art, truth and lies, illusion and reality. Charlie has never met her father, and Kasimir has lost all contact with his only daughter; a kind of father-daughter relationship seems to grow between them. Then the real doctor arrives. He is a practical man, a theatre-goer of sorts, but one who cannot understand these introverted artists and their egocentric problems. He only wants to be entertained in the theatre—“I like pastries because they taste good and they’re unhealthy.”—an attitude Charlie cannot tolerate. When the doctor can find no trace of illness in Kasimir and is finally able to flee from these eccentrics who have driven him nearly to distraction, the two artists are left alone with only each other, the theatre, and their illusions . . .

Bengt Ahlfors is one of Scandinavia's most well-known and successful playwrights and directors. Since 1963, he has written over 30 plays, most of them hit comedies; and directed over 60 plays, classical and contemporary, including many of his own works. He is also known as a composer, novelist, poet, screenwriter, a writer of satirical short stories, and as the former Artistic Director of the Swedish Theatre of Helsinki.

In 1986, Mr. Ahlfors wrote the world's first play dealing with the subject of heterosexual AIDS, Are There Tigers in the Congo?, which became an immediate success following its premiere at the renowned Little Theatre of Helsinki (where it ran for more than 400 performances), and subsequently went on to be translated into 19 languages and performed throughout the world. In America, Mr. Ahlfors’ stage adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, in an English version by Alan Goodson, has been seen in critically-acclaimed productions in regional theatres throughout the U.S., as has his dark comedy, The Last Cigar.

The Illusionists has enjoyed the same pattern of success as his other plays, which have all had long runs in numerous productions throughout Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe, most of them on national theatre stages. To date, The Illusionists has been seen in quite a few European productions, all of which have been both popular and critical successes, and has been translated from the original Swedish into Finnish, German, Russian, Estonian, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian.

Alan Goodson’s translation is the first English version of the play.

Two lonely tourists in Paris—Gustav, a bank clerk from Helsinki, and Elisa, a laundry girl from Pisa—meet by chance in the Musée d'Orsay. Just for fun, and because he's sure they'll never see each other again, Gustav tells Elisa he has some famous paintings like the ones in the museum hanging in his villa back home, including two by her favorite painter—Chagall; and because Elisa seems so cultured, Gustav assumes she must be some kind of Italian noblewoman. Thus begins a romantic musical comedy of a masquerade that gets out of hand, but eventually ends in love and redemption.

Subtitled "A Romantic Musical of Infatuation and Folly," Stolen Happiness has been referred to as "Chagallesque," not just because paintings by Chagall play a role in the story line, but because the style of the piece allows reality to bend in imaginative ways as the audience is swept along from Paris to Helsinki to Pisa and back again while the hapless love story of Gustav and Elisa unfolds until, in the finale, love ultimately conquers reality. All this is set to Ahlfors' vibrant music, which stylistically lies somewhere between European cabaret and American musical theatre, and has been performed in previous productions with around four musicians. Six or more actors (a minimum of three men and three women) make up the cast.

Stolen Happiness, Bengt Ahlfors’ full-length musical, has enjoyed the same pattern of success as his other plays, which have all had long runs in numerous productions throughout Scandinavia and Central Europe, most of them on national theatre stages. To date, Stolen Happiness has been seen in five countries in over a dozen productions, all of which have been both popular and critical successes, as has the CD of the original cast recording.

Bengt Ahlfors is one of Scandinavia's most well-known and successful playwrights and directors. Since 1963, he has written more than 30 plays, most of them hit comedies; and directed over 60 plays, classical and contemporary, including many of his own works. He is also known as a novelist, poet, screenwriter, composer, a writer of satirical short stories, and as the former Artistic Director of the Swedish Theatre of Helsinki. In 1986, Mr. Ahlfors wrote the world's first play dealing with the subject of heterosexual AIDS, Are There Tigers in the Congo?, which became an immediate success following its premiere at the renowned Little Theatre of Helsinki, one of the best-known theatres in Scandinavia, where it remained in the repertoire for more than 400 performances, and subsequently went on to be translated into 19 languages and performed throughout the world.

A former light opera star who hasn’t been on stage for twenty years, but will be playing the dramatic lead in the new play. A first-time playwright who can’t find an ending. A curmudgeon of a stage manager nostalgic for the frivolous comedies of the past. An actor in the midst of affairs with both actresses, aged 25 and 70. A local housewife who stops by to borrow costumes for a community theatre production and inadvertently gets swept into the chaos, and an artistic director struggling to hold these disparate personalities together and keep the theatre running while battling a morality-obsessed board of directors in a provincial, one-newspaper/one-theatre-critic town.

Bengt Ahlfors’ A Theatre Comedy takes us backstage as these and other eccentric characters—who have nothing in common but their love of the theatre—attempt to mount a production of a controversial new play, which the playwright thinks might be a drama: “It’s all about sexual angst, incest, and the hatred between a mother and her daughter, but I’ve tried to make it entertaining.” Matilda, the theatre’s passionate, brooding artistic director, gives body and soul to hold it all together as personality conflicts, ill-fated romances, and a disappearing playwright turn rehearsals into a hilarious misadventure that somehow, despite itself, ends in a triumphant success, but leaves Matilda wondering, “Was it really worth it? To give the audience in this town a couple hours of diversion? Do we love them so much that we’ll tear ourselves apart for their benefit? Why do we do it? You have to be crazy to work in the theatre.” Not necessarily. But it does help.

A Theatre Comedy, like many of Bengt Ahlfors’ plays, has enjoyed long runs in over a dozen productions throughout Scandinavia and Central Europe, most of them on national theatre stages.

Bengt Ahlfors is one of Scandinavia's most well-known and successful playwrights and directors. Since 1963, he has written more than 30 plays, most of them hit comedies; and directed over 60 plays, classical and contemporary, including many of his own works. He is also known as a novelist, poet, screenwriter, composer, a writer of satirical short stories, and as the former Artistic Director of the Swedish Theatre of Helsinki. In 1986, Mr. Ahlfors wrote the world's first play dealing with the subject of heterosexual AIDS, Are There Tigers in the Congo?, which became an immediate success following its premiere at the renowned Little Theatre of Helsinki, one of the best-known theatres in Scandinavia, where it remained in the repertoire for more than 400 performances, and subsequently went on to be translated into 19 languages and performed throughout the world.