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ERik Holmström holds a naked, headless Ken doll. Most of these photos are what you would expect: lean muscles, smooth skin. But down below, something is different. Between the hairless thighs is a small plastic penis attached to the hair. “It’s real hair,” says Holmström, the director of the organization Malmö Puppet Theatre (that’s “puppet theater” in Swedish). Actor and puppeteer Kajsa Ericsson jumps in. “It’s not real pubic hair,” he explains.
This toy is not just a new display for the company; and one of the stars. Malmö Dockteater has adapted Jackie Collins’ book, The World is Full of Married Menyou are creating experimental dolls that jump fearlessly into pornographic images that led to the book being banned in several countries when it was first published in 1968. After theaters in Malmö and Stockholm, the company is bringing the show to the newly renovated theater in the Yard in east London, where it will be performed in Swedish with a small English subtitle.
Collins seems to be small: the set consists of 14 dolls, with two dolls (who also make life-like dolls) that show what the people in the house have with reconstructed Barbie dolls.
Holmström says: “I had a dream to create a show where the audience would sit together and secretly be a little proud,” says Holmström. “You don’t expect it from a toy store.” She carries a headless Barbie with a stuffed bush and a small hole drilled into her cage. Collins was famous for her romantic novels and he didn’t want to bring her down on stage. “If Jackie tells us to do it,” mocks Holmström, “we do it.”
Combining theater, film and sex toys, nothing in this production is hidden from the viewer. We can see two actors (Ericsson and Erik Olsson) playing puppets. They are joined by the videographer Josefin Beischer, whose camera captures a small piece of the scene and it is shown on a large screen. The setting allows the audience to see everything: the people, the puppets, and the puppeteers.
“That’s one of the reasons I started our dolls,” says Holmström about the exhibition’s open plan. “I really liked mechanics.” They tend to show a hand that pulls a rope or grabs a piece of iron. “You can see the glue, the glue,” he says. “We work freely, and show things.”
Puppet shows are often associated with family theater; Malmö Dockteater wants to expand their appeal. The company started in a workshop in Malmö in 2015 and is still the only adult toy shop in Sweden. Over the past decade they’ve created artistic, low-cost shows of all kinds, from elaborate creations with robots and giant dino heads to homages to Dante’s Inferno with primitive puppets made from toilet paper tubes. Now, he wants to explore sex. Holmström explains: “When you do sex on stage with people, it’s probably embarrassing, maybe even shocking. “But you can use puppets to see sex in a different way.”
When he searched for the right story. Jackie Collins came to mind. “She’s very famous in Sweden, and everyone has her books on their grandmother’s shelves,” Holmström says of the queen of smut. “His books surrounded our childhood,” admits Ericsson. “It was a little restricted.
Collins’ book depicts the grim beauty of the 60s, where one man’s love affair sets off a historical drama about sex against the brutal culture of the film industry. Olsson marveled at how the story resonates today, with its sexist parties and oppressed sofas depicting stories that emerged in the #MeToo era. Olsson said: “It was written more than 50 years ago, but it was modern.” Dolls, meanwhile, seemed more appropriate for a book concerned with sex, bodies and beauty. Collins wrote of another: “It was like a beautiful doll, but empty.”
Their work – making shag toys – is a fascinating conflict for the innocent and uninterested. The dolls, built from Barbies, are drawn and rebuilt, with heads that jump to flexible bodies. Magnets help connect eyes and mouth. Banning hard-to-play toys is a dirty business. “At first it was frustrating,” says Ericsson, “because he couldn’t do simple things, like pick up the phone or open the door.” But after a while, the toys began to move easily. He said: “It got to the point where it was as if they started living alone. “They lived.”
We don’t often see experimental, international projects in the UK, without the funding or appetite for risk being found. But this commitment from the Yard helps bring a project that defies expectations to the British sector.
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In Sweden, the Holmström company has led the growth of adult toys over the past decade. Married Men, who started hosting in 2021, will “really help,” he says. Income from the government and the city of Malmö “has grown slightly year on year”. They describe their finances as “very secure, but always with a small budget”. Meanwhile, the London Yard, which has doubled in size, is also receiving support from the Swedish Arts Council, increasing its ability to host more international projects.
Bringing this multi-part exhibition to other cities presented another challenge: portability. When he took the show to Stockholm, there was a panic on the opening night because of a wrong tongue. “It’s only a few millimeters, and it’s on a tree,” Olsson says of one of the smaller (but more functional) pieces in the show.
Fortunately, the DIY charms of the Malmö Dockteater can be recreated after rummaging around the house cupboard at home – and on purpose. Holmström said: “I like it when the audience thinks they can go home and make it themselves. That night, a new language was put together. The show could go on, and some of the audience went home to rummage through their grandmother’s shelves, hoping to find another Collins gun to take to bed.”
The World is Full of Married Men and to at the Yard Theatre, London, July 21 until 1 August.
