Lauri Lagle's new production: longing for the past and the premonition of inevitability

Ekspeditsioon's new production "I Didn't Even Notice When You Left" premiered on 5 May at Sakala 3 theatre's main hall. Director Lauri Lagle has created a symphonic and polyphonic work that combines family mourning, capitalism critique, and a pessimistic worldview. It is one of the most comedic yet simultaneously most political productions in Lagle's oeuvre.

Ekspeditsioon's production "I Didn't Even Notice When You Left" had its premiere on 5 May at Sakala 3 theatre's main hall in Tallinn. Director Lauri Lagle has created a work that continues his previous direction while making significant political turns at the same time.

Liminal situation and familial grief

The fundamental condition of the production is liminal: gradually it becomes clear that a family has gathered to bury a deceased man, the family patriarch, and they are waiting for a priest who never arrives. The family is trapped in an endless state of waiting; they cannot even begin to eat before the priest comes, but more significantly, this entrapment is existential. From family dynamics, a broader critique of capitalism and society quickly emerges, where different voices do not contradict each other but speak, and often shout, past one another.

The stage is dominated by a massive sculpture that reveals itself to be a strange half-structure assembled from household appliances and furniture (artists Edith Karlson and Lauri Lagle). The entire construction is painted over in a dull beige tone that evokes thousands of identical panel apartment flats. This is the production's most dominant image, a lifeless mountain that also alludes to a widespread uniformity.

References and network of connections

The production is based on situation-driven dramaturgy, where around a single core situation improvisations and intertexts are woven. The website mentions Eastern European references as sources, Cristi Puiu's film "Sieranevada" and Bora Ćosić's "My Family's Role in the World Revolution," although Eastern Europeanness is not directly manifested in the production. Most strikingly, the core situation of "I Didn't Even Notice..." recalls Mrożek's "Tango": in both, a family on the brink of ruin attempts to hold itself together through rituals.

The recurring keywords "longing" and "ruin" from Lagle's previous productions are dominant here as well. There are many references to earlier works: a laden rich table like in "The Big Yawn" (NO99, 2012), the motif of a shipwreck of global catastrophe as in "Leviathan" (2024). But above all, Lagle's productions are united by rhythm: silences, expansions, emotional outbursts, and ritualism alternate in a complex weave.

Polyphony and cacophony

As a stage cacophony, the production evokes the multivocal noise of today's information environment. Religious rites, conspiracy theories, neoliberal speeches (performed by Sander Roosimägi), and there is even an earnest female communist (Eva Koldits), who unexpectedly becomes a police officer. War traumas, ideologies, and consumer critique melt into one cry that expresses an indefinable anguish.

The second act becomes almost an Aristophanic agon, where everyone attacks everyone and where any joint functioning is possible only in the manner of livestock inhabitants bleating together in a herd. Despite its moralistic quality, the production offers no clear axis or moral choice; this is precisely its strength.

Pessimism deepens

It is not quite clear what or whom is being mourned. Personal grief, the acute absence of something binding, and broader mourning of a changing world are woven together on stage. "In the old days, we were together," says Marika Vaarik at the end of the performance, and this sentence encapsulates the entire work's nostalgic and abandoned tone.

Pessimism has deepened in Lagle's productions year after year. "I Didn't Even Notice When You Left" is simultaneously a funeral rite and capitalism critique, combining beneath open comedy a profound sadness. It is certainly one of the most comedic yet also most political and pessimistic works in Lagle's oeuvre so far-a production that is as difficult to agree with as to disagree with.