Barbara at Aarhus Theatre: When love turns into a hunt

There's something special about sitting in a smaller hall in a theater. You're sitting so close that you could almost be on stage, and when the moss on the large, stepped rock glows green under the spotlights, you forget for a moment that you're in Aarhus. You're in the Faroe Islands, where the wind can almost be felt on your cheek, and the Faroese flag stands tall against a gray North Atlantic sky.

It is one of the strongest experiences of Sigrid Johannesen's staging of Barbara at Aarhus Theatre. The scenography by David Gehrt turns the small space into a whole world. The rock, the church, an entire island community gathered on a rotating, moss-covered sculpture. And when the Danish priest Poul comes to the country, and the Faroese flag is simply replaced with the Dannebrog, then one of the strongest images of the performance is already established. A small action that tells everything about what power is now moving into the island.

A woman among men

Barbara, played by Marie Boda, is the heart and unrest of the play. She is beautiful and lively, and she throws herself into love with a wildness that makes the men around her lose their footing. Both the priest Poul, whom she marries, then the French soldier, and later the young Andreas. She is the free-spirited woman and the wild naturalist that the novel and the staging portray her as.

And yet. When I sit there in the hall, I don't see a free woman. I see a woman who is searching for something she can't put into words. Barbara chases love from man to man, but it's as if she never really finds it. Or maybe she's looking in the wrong place. Maybe she thinks that men's desires and looks can fill her up, but I'm not sure that's what she needs. She just doesn't know it herself.

It is a reading that the performance does not necessarily suggest. Sigrid Johannesen has spoken about wanting to look at the past representation of women with the eyes of today, and about giving Barbara a new voice. And some of that succeeds. Marie Boda plays her with a vulnerability beneath the wildness that makes it impossible to take your eyes off her.

History makes women small

At some point during the performance, French troops land at the cliff. The Faroese women get scared. They shout over the cliff that they are now being raped. It is told with a lightness that shocked me a little. One of the women becomes pregnant by one of the soldiers and is then forced to marry a Faroese man she does not love.

I know it's a different time. I also know that this was the reality for women back then and in many places around the world, still is. But we've been fighting for years for women's bodies and experiences to be taken seriously, and it amazes me to see a scene like this treated so lightly.

The same applies to the way Barbara is referred to as a priest's whore. Because she has been married several times, because she has loved several men, she is a whore. Sigrid Johannesen has spoken of wanting to examine how women are demonized by their posterity, but when the term itself is allowed to live in a performance without response, I do not feel that the demonization is being examined, I feel that it is being repeated. A woman who has loved several is not a whore. She is a woman who has lived.

The visuals elevate the performance

I have my reservations about the story's female perspective, but there's no doubt that Barbara is a top-notch visual work. The light changes the set design from daylight green to a completely different tone as darkness descends over the island. The people stand on the cliff edge and look down at the Danish officials arriving on the island, and you sense the gaze the director is talking about. The Faroese gaze at the Danes, and the Danish gaze back. The power relationship is right there in the scene before a single word is spoken.

The intimacy of the Studio room also enhances the experience. You sit so close that you can see the sweat on Poul's forehead, hear the slight drawl in Barbara's voice, feel the choir's breathing. It's theatre that uses proximity, and it suits a story that is, at its core, about people who can't find each other, even when they're standing very close.

Barbara is a play that wants a lot. It wants to tell about love, about colonial power, about a woman who will not be tamed. It succeeds in some places, and in other places it slipped away from me. But it is a play that stays with me. One that you discuss on the way out, and one that makes you think about what it means to chase a love that you have not defined yourself.

Others may experience it as the effervescent drama it is set up to be. Theatre is not always an experience we all view the same, and that is perhaps precisely why it is worth going and seeing it. To find out where you stand.

Practical information

• Performance: Barbara
• Location: Aarhus Theatre, Scala stage
• Game period: May 2 to June 6, 2026
• Staging: Sigrid Johannesen
• Scenography: David Gehrt
• On stage: Marie Boda (Barbara), Emil Busk Jensen (Poul) and Aarhus Theatre's ensemble and choir
• Based on: Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen's novel Barbara from 1939
• Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes – without intermission
• Tickets: aarhusteater.dk