Sam and the Olsen Banden: Samuel Beckett on the Danish Stage
Af Ian Butcher
Personal statement.
As a Beckett scholar, married to a Dane, living the majority of my time in Denmark, learning Danish, my quest for several years was to find a connection between Beckett and Denmark. My mistake was to focus on if Beckett had ever visited Denmark, for which there is no evidence. Dead end. However, his relationship with Danish theatre was more direct than his absence suggests. The epiphany came when I started to dig around the Olsen Banden [The Olsen Gang] and particularly Morten Grunwald, Benny in the gang. When I came to Denmark for the first time in 1981 with no Danish, the comedic antics and pratfalls of the characters in the films were immediately understandable to me. I still have a fondness for the films.
Olsen Banden
Everyone in Denmark knows the Olsen Banden. A series of fourteen films made over thirty years from 1968 to the final one in 1998: final as one of the cast members (Poul Bundgaard) and the director (Tom Hedegaard) died during filming. They still managed to produce the film, Olsen Bandens Sidste Stik [The Olsen Gang’s Last Trick]. The lovable, hapless gang comprises three main characters who are petty criminals: Egon (Ove Sprogøe) the diminutive, bowler-hatted, cigar-stub champing leader who comes up each film with ever more fantastical plans to get money; Benny (Morten Grunwald) the tall, chatty guy with the too-short trousers and yellow socks[1] who hops and skips his way after Egon; Kjeld (Poul Bundgaard) the nervous, jittery, family man who continually clutches at his vintage medical bag which contains the specialised gear needed for the gang’s heists. All are terrorised by Kjeld’s waspish wife, Yvonne (Kirsten Walther) and sought for various felonies by the equally inefficient police officers, Superintendent Jensen (Axel Strøbye) and Inspector Holm (Ole Ernst).
Foto: Jørn Freddie (i samarbejde med Lars Grunwald). Samuel Becketts “Mens vi venter på Godot” (Waiting for Godot), Bristol Teatret i København i 1976. [1, 2]. Instruktion Lily Weiding: med den faste trio fra Olsen-banden på scenen Morten Grunwald (til venstre) ses i rollen som Vladimir (Didi). Poul Bundgaard (i midten) spiller det brutale magtmenneske Pozzo. Ove Sprogøe (til højre) ses som vagabonden Estragon (Gogo).
Egon, Benny og Kjeld i Olsen-banden i Jylland, 1971.
The plots usually follow a pattern. Egon – whose speciality is the cracking of safes using a stethoscope – is let out of prison at the opening scene of the film and is met by his accomplices. During his sentence he has been hatching new “genius” schemes for the ultimate robbery. Some of these first words have become famous catchphrases. Egon’s “Jeg har en plan” [I have a plan], to which the ever-enthusiastic Benny responds “Skide godt, Egon!” [Bloody good, Egon!]. Kjeld, nervous as ever, asks “Er det farligt?” [Is it dangerous?]. Yvonne, ever bossy, usually objects, “Nej, altså…” [Oh, honestly…]. By the end of the film, (except the fifth, sixth and fourteenth) Egon is put back in prison again. Egon is the fall-guy, as the other two almost always manage to stay free.
The Beckett Connection
Beckett’s Waiting for Godot [Mens Vi Venter på Godot] was first performed in Denmark in April 1954 at the Aarhus Teater using the milestone translation by Christian Ludvigsen. This was only a little over a year from the very first world premiere of En Attendant Godot [Waiting for Godot] on January 5th,1953 at the small experimental Théâtre de Babylone (a former butcher’s shop) in Paris. This first production was in French, as Beckett wrote almost exclusively in French from 1946 onwards and made his own translations, or versions, into English afterwards. As with the original French production, the Danish audience’s reaction in 1954 was bewilderment as they struggled to understand the abstract plot, minimalist set and lack of conventional dramatic action. However, the production sparked intellectual debate and paved the way for future stagings.
The definitive, highly-acclaimed production that firmly introduced Danish audiences to the Theatre of the Absurd premiered at the Riddersalen theatre in April 1957. The well-known comedian, jazz musician and actor Jørgen Ryg, played Lucky, setting the precedent for comic actors to expand their range by appearing in the play. The play was shown – in black and white – on Danish television in 1962 with the shortened title Vi Venter på Godot.
Fast-forward to 1976 and the Bristol Teatret production, featuring the three Olsen Banden members. Morten Grunwald/Benny played Vladimir; Ove Sprogøe/Egon played Estragon, and Poul Bundgaard/Kjeld played Pozzo. Lars Knutzon, a non-“gang” member but prominent actor and director, played Lucky. The Dreng [Boy] was played by Peter Bundgaard, Poul Bundgaard’s eleven-year-old son. The set design was credited to a certain “Mortimer Greenwood”, a pun on Grunwald’s name, who did the design work himself. Having these universally famous, beloved stars stepping into Beckett’s existential wasteland could have been viewed as a gimmick. Instead, it was a stroke of genius as the production garnered stellar reviews to sell-out audiences. The comic-timing and comedic chemistry between the actors translated well into the roles of Gogo and Didi. The production was so successful that it cemented Morten Grunwald’s lifelong admiration of Beckett, leading him to direct and stage the play later in his stage career. The production still has quasi-legendary status in the annals of Danish theatre.
Morten Grunwald
Grunwald was an influential and visionary theatre director, actor, producer and champion of Beckett. His career included the heading of major Danish theatrical institutions: Bristol Teatret (1971-1980), Betty Nansen Teatret (1980-1992) and the Østre Gasværk Teater (1989-1998). Grunwald famously stated that he wanted to “spille Becketts partitur” [play Beckett’s musical score], stripping away the overly intellectual interpretations and insisting that actors focus on rhythm, pacing and comedic timing (Information 2013). He realised that Vladimir and Estragon were fundamentally Vaudeville tramps, a dynamic that his trio already mastered. Over his lifetime, Grunwald directed, produced or acted in virtually all of Beckett’s major works including Endgame [Slutspil], Happy Days [Glade Dage], and Krapp’s Last Tape [Krapp’s Sidste Bånd].
In 1975, Beckett travelled to Berlin to the Schiller Teater to personally direct Warten auf Godot [Waiting for Godot].Beckett was notoriously private, difficult and protective of his work, but Grunwald managed to break through the objections and get his permission to watch Beckett direct. Alongside his wife (actress Lily Weiding) and his friend Ove Sprogøe, Grunwald travelled to Berlin specifically to sit in on Beckett’s rehearsals to learn from the master for his own later production. He also obtained a personal meeting with Beckett, calling him afterwards “et naermest magisk geni” [a near- magical genius] (Berlinske). Grunwald wrote and talked extensively about the encounter which completely redefined Grunwald’s approach to staging Beckett’s plays, that every pause, step, gesture had to be mathematically precise. This philosophy became Grunwald’s basis for every play he directed for the next forty years.
In the 1976 Godot production, as a fitting tribute to his role as Benny, Grunwald wore his gaudy, plaid, two button Olsen Banden jacket as Vladimir. The mere presence of Estragon’s bowler hat on Ove Strogøe instantly made the Danish audience think of the gang’s Egon. Grunwald returned to Godot in 1990 in a Betty Nansen production where he played Pozzo, with Lars Knutzon as Estragon, Tommy Kenter as Vladimir and Morten Surballe as Lucky. Both famous actors and Kenter a renown actor-comedian.
In 2013, Grunwald returned to Godot as its director at the Folkteatret in Copenhagen to excellent critiques. On 18-21 April 2016, the Dansk Skuespillerforbund [Danish Actors Association] organised a Beckett masterclass to be given by Grunwald in Copenhagen. Grunwald worked directly with Beckett’s unusually detailed stage directions and texts and focused on acting precision, timing, physicality [“kropslighed”], musical diction [“musikalsk diction”], dramaturgy; understanding of Beckett’s circular and absurd structures, and the placing of Beckett in relation to wider traditions of dramatic and comedy performances. The masterclasses mainly examined Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days. This shows that Grunwald’s relationship with Beckett was not simply that of an actor who happened to appear in Godot, but that by 2016 he had sufficient practical expertise and understanding to teach other actors how to work with Beckett.
His last appearance, at the age of 82, was in the 3 x Beckett (Ikke jeg, Krapps Sidste Bånd, and Hva’ Joe [Not I, Krapp’s Last Tape, and Eh Joe] at his beloved Østre Gasværk Teater on 10 June 2017 where he played the lead role in Beckett’s Hva’ Joe [Eh Joe]directed by Walter Asmus. The lead role does not speak for the entire thirty-minute play; he has to react by facial expressions and physical presence to an off-stage, haunting, internalised female voice. The reviews complimented his portrayal of the “tilsyneladende forstening, der daekker over så mange følelser” [the apparent petrification that covers up so many emotions] (Information 2013).[2]
By the end of his career Grunwaldhad appeared in some fifty films, five TV series, stage roles and revues.[3] He left a considerable art collection behind, being always Vild Med Kunst [Mad about Art][4]; throughout his career he tried to build bridges between art and the theatre. He managed to get leading Danish artists to make theatre posters for his productions. He retired after his Hva’ Joe role stating that his “body was too old” and died in November 2018.[5] His memoirs record his career as actor, director and theatre director (Grunwald 2002 and 2013).
Asmus and Grunwald
The German Walter D. Asmus was famously Beckett’s preferred assistant and closest directorial colleague, working side-by-side at the Schiller Teater in Berlin during the 1970s and 1980s. This was the start of a fourteen-year artistic collaboration and friendship. Asmus describes how he and Beckett might sit in a cafe and Beckett would scribble instructions on a receipt or napkin, saying “here is the tree, and here is the stone…”.[6]
The 1975 Schiller Teater production of Warten Auf Godot [Waiting for Godot] is legendary in theatre history. Beckett had directed Endspiel [Endgame] at the theatre, but it was the first time that Beckett took complete directorial control over his most famous play. Asmus was his assistant director, serving as a vital link between Beckett’s rigid creative vision and the German-speaking cast (although Beckett spoke good German). Beckett used this production to prune and strip away the realism from his original 1953 script. Beckett prepared for the production by meticulously mapping out the entire staging in private notebooks. In the first notebook he wrote the initial staging; during the rehearsals, adjustments were made and Beckett carefully logged the modifications in red ink in the second notebook. These notes are so historically valuable to Beckett scholars that they were produced as a facsimile with academic commentary as The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot (Beckett 2019).Asmus absorbed Beckett’s precise methodology so deeply that he used them throughout his life in directing authoritative productions based entirely on these 1975 Berlin notes.
Grunwald met Asmus in Berlin on his 1975 trip to watch Beckett rehearse. Over the years, Grunwald repeatedly brought Asmus to Copenhagen to advise as his primary partner. They carefully split the acting and directing responsibilities to keep productions aligned with Beckett’s mathematical rhythms. Productions include Ikke Jeg [Not I] directed by Asmus, Hva’ Joe [Eh Joe] which starred Grunwald and directed by Asmus, Krapps Sidste Bånd [Krapp’s Last Tape] directed by Grunwald.
Asmus directed every single one of Beckett’s nineteen plays over his long career. Rather than sticking to one theatre, Asmus specialized in staging definitive, globally touring revivals. His single most famous theatre production was his 1991 staging of Waiting for Godot at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Theatre academics regard it as the “definitive” modern version. Asmus kept this exact production alive for nearly two decades, rehearsing and remounting it with the same, core cast, touring to London, New York, Beijing, Toronto, Melbourne and Shanghai. Trusted implicitly by Beckett to direct his precise, technically exhausting late monologues, he was repeatedly called on to direct TV and theatre productions with Billie Whitelaw and Lisa Dwan, Beckett’s fetich actresses. A truly magnificent film was made of the stage production in 2001, directed by Michael Linsay-Hogg and featuring Barry McGovern (Vladimir), Johnny Murphy (Estragon), Alan Stanford (Pozzo) and Stephen Brennan (Lucky) as part of a Beckett on Film initiative and retaining the original production’s core DNA, rhythms and stagings.[7] The play was part of a festival to mark Dublin’s year as the European City of Culture when the Gate Theatre – with RTE and Trinity College, Dublin – mounted all nineteen of Beckett’s stage plays.[8]
Christian Ludvigsen
Christian Ludvigsen was the third person responsible for introducing Beckett to the Danish public. He was an academic, literary scholar and dramaturg who translated some forty classical and modern plays into Danish. He discovered the playwright’s work in the early 1950s and translated Waiting for Godot into Danish for the Danish premiere at the Aarhus Teater in 1956. His translation was officially published the following year. Ludvigsen went on to translate almost the entirety of Beckett’s repertoire for the theatre and radio.[9] For the record, Klaus Rifbjerg, the famous Danish author, subsequently produced translated versions of several Beckett plays including Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days. A Rifbjerg translation was used in a 1977 production of Godot, for example in a Bristol Music Centers Teater.
Beginning in 1957 Ludvigsen maintained a fourteen-year correspondence with Beckett who trusted Ludvigsen implicitly, even to the point of explaining obscure jokes, rhythms, stage directions and meanings in his texts to make sure that the Danish versions were perfectly accurate. This was extraordinary as Beckett rarely gave interviews or explained his work. The two exchanged many postcards and detailed letters, where Ludvigsen cross-examined Beckett on his texts and Beckett promptly sent long, detailed replies.
Perrelli writes “In 1959-1960, thanks to a French scholarship, Ludvigsen moved to Paris…He also had the chance to spend time, together with his wife, at Samuel Beckett’s home” (Perrelli 2013 12). This confirms the relationship as more than just a professional one. Beckett’s published letters record correspondence with Ludvigsen in volumes II, III and IV. On 6 August 1957 while discussing Hvo Som Falder [All That Fall]Beckett directed Ludvigsen toward Rober Pinget’s French translation, which Beckett had revised, and a German translation. In a letter of 1 May 1956 Beckett advised Ludvigsen to “let the people laugh by all means, and then be reminded that it is no laughing matter” (Ludvigsen 1997 41). Such exchanges demonstrate that Beckett was not indifferent to the setting of his work in another language and conscious that laughter could co-exist with the tragic. The letters are highly-prized by scholars as Beckett drops his famous refusals to explain his work.[10] Ludvigsen also published portions of his own notes and correspondence in 1997 (Ludvigsen Chr. 1997). References to Beckett are woven extensively throughout the entire work. Ludvigsen’s daughter also wrote about her father in her own account of Ludvigsen’s professional and family life (Ludwigsen Marie C. 2019).
Another landmark staging was the 1962 production of Glade Dage (Happy Days) at the Fiolteatret, translated by Ludvigsen who acted as a theatrical adviser, directed by Palle Skibelund and with Bodil Udsen – who came out of revue and popular comedy – as Winnie. The production was a huge success and subsequently toured, recording some 251 performances including a guest outing in Bergen. Danish Radio televised it in 1964. Udsen apparently played the role with tydeligt eftertryk på komikken og galgenhumoren [with a strong emphasis on comedy and gallows humour].[11]
In a letter from Beckett to Ludvigsen of 8 December 1966 (Beckett Letters IV 54-56), it becomes clear that Beckett was actively expanding his role from passive author to hands-on theatre director. He wrote to Ludvigsen that “Godot à mon avis est insuffisamment ‘visualisé’ dans son écriture” [In my opinion Godot is insufficiently ‘visual’ in its writing]. This foregrounds Beckett’s lifelong focus on the physical realism of the actual actors and space, and how his plays are ‘provisional’ and may have to be modified in production from the written page. Hence the importance of the physical aspects of Beckett’s plays: clowning, repetition, bodily routines and verbal failure.
Ludvigsen attempted in 1967 to interest Beckett in working with the Odin Teatret – originally founded in Oslo in 1964, the theatre moved definitively to Holsterbro in north-west Jutland – but the initiative came to nothing. [12] Ludvigsen himself records the attempts under the telling heading “Dear Samuel Beckett” (Ludvigsen 1997 73). Beckett’s letters held at Emory University in the US note that Beckett was in Berlin on 26 September 1967 working on Endspiel [Endgame]; that he returned to Paris the next day and subsequently consulted an eye specialist in Berne, Switzerland, on 4 November. It is just feasible, but not documentarily provable, that Beckett’s decision not to work with Ludvigsen and the Odin Teatret was due to his eye issues which needed urgent attention (Emory 1967).
Conclusion
The history of Beckett in Denmark is therefore more than a record of premieres, revivals and individual performances. It is a history of mediation: of how Beckett’s work has been translated, interpreted, performed and repeatedly repositioned within Danish theatrical culture. From the early work of Christian Ludvigsen and the pioneering reception of Vi venter på Godot, through the sustained advocacy of figures such as Morten Grunwald, Beckett has entered Danish culture not as a fixed foreign import but as a body of work continually recreated in performance.
This process of mediation also helps explain the particular character of Beckett’s Danish reception. The distance between Beckett’s international reputation as a difficult, avant-garde writer and his presence within Danish popular culture is less absolute than it might initially appear. The involvement of Grunwald, Ove Sprogøe and Poul Bundgaard in the 1976 Godot is especially revealing in this respect. Their association with Olsen Banden brought actors identified with one of Denmark’s most enduring comic traditions into contact with a work conventionally associated with intellectual modernism and theatrical experimentation. Yet the juxtaposition is not as incongruous as it might seem. Beckett’s theatre itself draws upon vaudeville, music hall, silent cinema, clowning and physical comedy.[13] The Danish popular tradition could therefore provide not merely a means of making Beckett accessible, but a performance vocabulary already capable of responding to some of the deepest comic structures within his work.
Grunwald’s subsequent commitment to Beckett is significant for the same reason. His career demonstrates that Beckett in Denmark has depended not simply upon the arrival of texts but upon individuals willing to invest their theatrical lives. Such mediation is inevitably interpretative: every translation, production and performance constitutes an encounter between Beckett’s writing and a particular cultural moment. Beckett’s own “translations” were often different from his French original and can be classified more as “versions”. As mentioned above, Beckett’s texts and stage directions were frequently modified in rehearsal and performance:
The French version of Godot refers to the“Roussillon” whereas the English version has been Hibernicised to “Connemara”. When Gogo and Didi insult each other to pass the time, the French insult, curiously, is “Architecte!”, whereas the English version has the elongated “crrritic!”
The Danish version remains faithful to the original geographic references. Danish theatrical history consequently complicates any simple distinction between Beckett and his reception. What Danish audiences encountered was always Beckett as refracted through Danish language, performers, theatrical traditions and expectations.
Perhaps this is ultimately the most revealing aspect of Beckett’s Danish afterlife. His work has proved capable of moving between cultural registers without losing its strangeness: from the experimental theatre of the 1950s to popular performers, from literary translation to physical comedy, and from the first Danish Godot to successive generations of directors and actors. The continuing presence of Beckett on Danish stages suggests not that his work has become familiar or domesticated, but that its very openness permits new performers and audiences to discover different possibilities within it. Beckett’s Danish history is consequently not simply a story of reception. It is a story of renewal. Of how a theatre grounded in silence, repetition, uncertainty and failure continues to generate meaning whenever the curtain rises and two figures once again wait for Godot.
Bibliography
Beckett, Samuel. The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett (vol. 1 of 4). Ed by James Knowlson and Dougald McMillan. Faber & Faber, 2019.
Christoffersen, Erik Exe, ed. Odin Teatret. Et dansk verdens teater. Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2012.
Emory University. Chercher: The Interactive Index to the Letters of Samuel Beckett in Public Archives. Emory Centre for Digital Scholarship. Accessed 6 September, 2026. [Letter of 1 May 1956] https://chercherbeckettletters.emory.edu
Grunwald, Morten. Kort tid: Blå maerker og gyldne øjeblikke. Fortalt til Samuel Rachlin. Gyldendal, 2005.
Grunwald, Morten. Min Tid I Gule Sokker [My Time in Yellow Socks]. Morten Grunwald and Per Kushner, People’s Press, 2013.
Ludvigsen, Christian. Det Begyndte med Beckett: min egen teaterhistorie, Aktuelle teaterproblemer [It Began with Beckett: My Own Theatre History], Aarhus Institut for Dramaturgi, 1997.
Ludvigsen, Marie C. Det begyndte med Chr.L. – min egen teaterhistorie: en fortaelling om at vaere I familie med Dramatugi. Peripeti 16, no. S9, 2019, 62-70.
Perrelli, Franco. Bricks to Build a Teaterlaboratorium: Odin Teatret and Chr. Ludvigsen. Biblioteca dello Spettacolo Nordico, no.7, Edizioni di Pagina, 2013, p.12.
“Jeg kan aldrig blive faerdig med Beckett”, Berlingske, 21 February 2013.
“Morten Grunwald: Jeg vil gerne spille Becketts partiture”, Information, 23 February 2013.
Ian Butcher is an English-Belgian independent scholar living in Belgium and Denmark with his Danish wife. He has qualifications from the Universities of Kent and York and an MA with Distinction from The Open University. He has been a teacher, in Switzerland, a lecteur d’anglais at the Université de Nice-Côte d’Azur and spent over thirty years as a Senior Vice President in the Brussels office of a US-based management consultancy. He has published articles in peer-reviewed journals on Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Pinter, Proust, Austen, Woolf, Ernaux, Wilde, aspects of the theatre, and narratology (working titles and opening lines in literary works). He is currently studying for a PhD by Publication with the University of Portsmouth.
[1] Grunwald’s memoires are entitled “Min Tid I Gule Sokker” [My Time in Yellow Socks]. Morten Grunwald and Per Kushner, People’s Press, 2013.
[2] See Annelis Kuhlmann’s review “3 x Beckett: Iscenesat af Walter Asmus og Morten Grunwald”. peripeti, 11 February 2017.
[3] Danskefilm.dk
[4] “Morten Grunwald’s Art Collection at Auction”. Bruun-Rasmussen.dk. 2022.
[5] “Morten Grunwald on karriere -stop: – Det er en befrielse [Morten Grunwald on retiring: It is a liberation]. Nyheder. TV2. 11 June 2017.
[6] “Staging Beckett: It’s all poetic, Walter”. Moderated by Nicholas Johnson. Samuel Beckett Summer School, Dublin, 14 August, 2014.
[7] Waiting for Godot, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Dublin: Blue Angel Films/Tyrone Productions, 2001.
[8] Gate Theatre Beckett Festival Official Programme. Dublin: Gate Theatre, 1991.
[9] Surprisingly, there is no single collected volume(s) of Beckett’s work in Danish. Nor is there one single publishing house that owns or publishes Beckett’s entire catalogue in Danish. Instead, Beckett’s works are fragmented across different publishing eras, translation projects, and individual volume printings.
[10] The letters are included in The Letters of Samuel Beckett (1929-1989). Vol.IV. 4 volumes. Eds. Martha Dow Fehsenfeld et al. Cambridge University Press, 2009 to 2016.
[11] Dansk Biografisk Leksikon. Accessed 3 September 2026.
[12] For an account of Odin Teatret’s history in Denmark, see Erik Exe Christoffersen, ed. Odin Teatret. Et dansk verdens teater. Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2012.
[13] See Ian Butcher, “From Vaudeville and Hollywood to Godot’s Country Road: The Comic Tramp-Clown ‘Pseudo-Couple’ and Physical Comedy as Philosophy”, Journal of European Studies, June 19, 2026. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00472441261455805.