Aaf Brandt Corstius gives an intimate insight into a living trauma in Welcome to my pathetic youth

Aaf Brandt Corstius was 6 when her mother died, she says in her first theater solo Welcome to my sad childhood. She was left with her younger brother and sister and a crazy, antisocial, often unwashed father named Hugo, a man who was totally unfit for fatherhood. He was also so confused after the death of his wife that in a fit of panic he emigrated with the family to the US state of Minnesota, only to return disillusioned a year later.

A dysfunctional family in a completely unstable situation: it could be fodder for a carefree comedy, something like the American sitcom Who’s the Boss with Tony Danza as a young widower. But the story of Brandt Corstius could also be seen as a painful drama, if you focus on the neglect, lovelessness, compulsive neuroses and finally the barely concealable trauma she is left with.

Brandt Corstius, writer and columnist for this newspaper, among others, chose the comedy. Out of necessity, it seems. She stands alone on stage, wears cheerful dungarees and tells the story in a laconic way. About her father and his bizarre rituals and advice: whoever wants to wash a sweater, jumps on a bicycle when it rains and hangs it to dry on return. About the stepmothers they often laughed at together. And about the obsessive-compulsive neuroses she developed after her mother’s death. The audience is given a comical emergency lesson in punctuation.

Brandt Corstius is not an actress, but he is a stoic stage personality. She makes cabaret theater or theatrical cabaret, and she does it well. But of course what she says is not just for laughs.

Initially she wanted to write a book about her childhood, she told Saturday in an interview, but she didn’t find the right tone. It soon became too gloomy and too angry for her. This was certainly not to be a settlement with her father. That is why she chose theater, in which you can switch between emotions more quickly.

Humor is a defense for her. Whenever her pathetic story threatens to get too pathetic, she interrupts it with interludes like a Children for childrendance, a treatise on the lolo ball or other retro toys, and excerpts from television series such as Little House on the Prairie on Who’s the Boss.

What seem (and are in themselves) superficial frivolities are used by her as a diversionary manoeuvre. One moment she tells you that her father forbade her to wash herself during her period, the next you watch Tony Danza who, out of sheer discomfort, tries to seduce a fashion model in lingerie when he goes to buy his daughter’s first bra – something that Hugo never did for Aaf.

This mechanism ensures that her pathetic story becomes more than that: painful, to make you quiet, an intimate glimpse into a living trauma, and that is very valuable.