The viking discovery of America sets the stage for this amusing little spex at Kalmar Nation, the only one to be held entirely in English. Despite its shoestring budget, Leif Erikson manages to entertain for most of its two hour runtime, thinks Jesper Lodin.
In a nutshell: viking captain Leif Erikson grabs cretin son Thorgils and dopey nephew Eric along with a crew of assorted oddball characters and heads off to discover America, with an eye towards the mead he might find there. Along the way, he is forced to contend with Italian jerkette Christina Columba as well as stave off the unwanted theological advances of a christian fundamentalist.
As one might expect, the plot is not terribly important in itself, but it thankfully scurries to the side to make way for the jokes whenever they come – which is just south of ”all the time”.
Overall, the cast is varied, large, and fun, although some of the characters speak a bit jarringly loud – which, when combined with the occasional dud joke, can make certain passages somewhat obnoxious. But regardless of any nitpicking, the actors are obviously enjoying themselves, and there seems to be some real camaraderie among the members of the Kalmar spex group.
As there is a small band turning in spirited performances, the musical numbers too are handled well, with the possible exception of Eric’s only musical number, a distorted train wreck about, err, the poop deck.
A shame, as Eric is one of the more charmingly low-key characters otherwise.
Still, as with virtually any form of comedy, some of the jokes do fall flat, but the cast takes it in stride and plows on admirably until one that elicits a better response comes along.
It goes without saying that your mileage may vary a bit depending on preference, but most of the material should be smile-worthy at the least, if not belly-guffaw-funny. And, well, the end result is probably not any less entertaining than, say, whatever the major American sitcom factories churned out this week.
Best part? Carl Knutsson’s hilarious appearances as Hjalmar the Porno Viking, which probably got more ‘retakes’ than anything else.
Without having ever met him before, I’d like to go out on a limb here and say he was born to play that character.
