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Nobel Play to Have First Performance

Posted on: Thursday, 1 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Aside from creating the Nobel Prizes, Alfred Nobel's claim to fame was inventing dynamite. It's less known that he was a playwright and poet, too.

His only play, "Nemesis," an obscure tragedy in four acts, will be performed for the first time at a small theater in Stockholm on Dec. 10 - the day the Nobel Prizes are awarded. It will run about a month

"`Nemesis' is a remarkable play. It is challenging and private and deals with many things that one does not associate with Nobel," Ture Rangstrom, head of the Intima theater where it will be staged, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The Swedish industrialist wrote the play during the last year of his life and it was not printed until he was dying. Most copies of the play were destroyed immediately after his death in 1896 because some Swedish clergymen labeled it scandalous and blasphemous. Only three copies survived.

"It is a very violent story, with violence, torture and incest. It's not without reason that it was censored in its time," said actress Gunnel Fred, who will play the Virgin Mary when she appears with the devil in a dream sequence in the play.

Nobel was born in Stockholm in 1833. He invented dynamite in 1866 and later built up companies and laboratories in more than 20 countries around the world. On Nov. 27, 1895, Nobel signed his last will providing for the establishment of the Nobel Prizes. He died of cerebral hemorrhage in his home in San Remo, Italy, on Dec. 10, 1896.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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