Kaare Gundersen

The play opens in the study at Hakon Werle's house during a dinner party for the return of Werle's son, Gregers, from the Hoidal mines. Gregers has not come home for fifteen years. Old Ekdal appears before two servants, begging to be let into the office. Ekdal was an army officer and partner to Werle until a forestry scandal sent him to prison over some scandal. He now works as one of Werle's copyists.

Ludvina is considered a woman of loose morals in her small home town. When she becomes pregnant, she decides to raise the child without the help of a man.

A man who can not laugh gets help by a psychiatrist.

Nobel Laureate Harry Martinson's famous poem consists of 103 cantos and relates the tragedy of a space ship which, originally bound for Mars with a cargo of colonists from the ravaged Earth, is ejected from the solar system after an accident and into an existential struggle.